


Twisting And Turning The Colours In Rows

by leopardwrites



Category: Låt den rätte komma in | Let the Right One In (2008), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Big Bang Challenge, Bullying, Friendship, Homophobia, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leopardwrites/pseuds/leopardwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock/Let The Right One In Fusion (knowledge of film/book not needed). John Watson is an isolated thirteen year old boy: he’s got a distant mother, a resentful older sister, and a sadistic bully at school called Moriarty who’s got it in for him. When Sherlock Holmes moves in next door, he and John form a rapid, intense friendship based on their mutual loneliness. Unfortunately for John, Sherlock has issues that go much deeper than loneliness. </p><p>  <i>“I need blood to live, yes.”</i></p><p>  <i>John lets that sink in. “So are you… are you dead? Undead? How old are you, really?”</i></p><p>  <i>The lightbulb above them flickers and Sherlock’s fingers tap out a short rhythm on the glass as he thinks about his answer. John copies the rhythm, softer, quieter.</i></p><p>  <i>“I’m conscious,” Sherlock says with a small shrug of one shoulder. “I move, respire, react to my environment… I miss a few of the basic life processes, but I think I qualify as ‘alive’. And I’m thirteen, like I told you.” A rueful smile, and his hand drops to his side. “But I have been thirteen for longer than is naturally possible.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For [Sherlock Big Bang](http://sherlockbigbang.livejournal.com/) 2012 on LJ. Please visit the community and look at the fantastic work of the authors and artists! You should also check out the stunning artwork kindly made for this fic: [I'm Thirteen Like I Told You, by chicagoartnerd](http://archiveofourown.org/works/584116)
> 
> Thank you to [circ_bamboo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo) for the beta!

_Nothing happens to me._

John puts his pen down and sighs. This was a terrible idea and the school counsellor, Karen, should be sacked. Writing a diary about everything that happens to him is not going to stop the bullying. Expelling the bullies _would_ stop the bullying, but John has refused to name names for weeks now, and Karen hasn’t stopped trying to extract them from him with increasingly cruel and unusual interrogation techniques. Forcing him to write a diary is only the latest.

Looking at his last rather depressing statement again, John crosses it out. Best not to let Karen think he might do something stupid. He puts the (spiral-bound, cheap) diary away in the desk drawer, where it will sit unused, innocuous next to his Swiss Army knife, and closes the drawer with a shove. A shove that was slightly too forceful, because it causes his older sister to shout from the next room: “Keep it down, shithead!”

Ah, his mother must have gone out again, so Harry can use whatever words she likes without fear of retribution. Funny, he didn’t even hear the front door go. Fuck-off-Alan must have arrived to pick her up when John had his headphones on. Good, that means he’s managed to miss Fuck-off-Alan’s smug, shiny face and his patronising backslaps.

John glances at his watch – five to eight. Looks like he’s on cooking duty tonight then; it’s only a matter of time before Harry starts bellowing about that too. He gets up, back stiff after sitting at his desk for so long. As he stretches, movement outside the window catches his eye.

It’s still snowing heavily and it’s a little hard to see, but John can make out a woman lifting large boxes out of a car. Moving in? At almost eight o’clock on a Sunday evening?

The lamppost casts a sickly orange glow over the woman as she moves under it, highlighting the wrinkles on her face and her greying hair, and John realises she’s actually quite old. Too old to be moving heavy boxes like that. He’s just considering going downstairs to offer to help when the front passenger side door of the car opens and a shadowy figure slips out. The woman stops walking towards the building, turning towards the car again as though her name has just been called. As the shadowy figure approaches her and comes into the light, John sees a boy about his own age take the box from the woman. Probably her son, or grandson more likely. The woman ruffles the boy’s curly hair and he scowls, striding away from her and up to the building.

Bored and somewhat curious, John watches him for a moment. The boy walks swiftly up the path, not struggling with the box at all like the woman was. As John watches, the boy suddenly stops his determined march, jerks his head up and to the left to stare directly at John’s bedroom window and their eyes meet. The boy does not look curious like John; he looks _knowing_. John ducks down out of the way, ashamed at being caught spying.

Crouching below his windowsill, John’s heart pounds a fast, erratic beat, and he shudders at the chill that has settled over him.

He doesn’t dare look out again to see if the boy is still staring up at his room.

The main door of the building creaks open and then rattles as it slams shut – he’s probably not still staring then.

“You going to do dinner or what, John?” yells Harry.

John looks at his watch, dead on eight o’clock. He laughs uneasily, shaking his head, and goes to make dinner. As he does, he puts all silly thoughts of unsettling pale eyes out of his mind.

He can’t help but notice the muffled thuds and thumps and the low voices that go on for the next hour or so, letting him know that the woman and the boy are moving into 221B Baker Street Court, the flat next door to his.

 

* * *

 

There had been someone at the window. About twelve or thirteen years old, light blond hair, scared face when Sherlock caught him looking.

Sherlock waits. Nothing happens.

“Come along, Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson says, bustling past him with another box, much lighter than the one he took from her. “What are you staring at, hmm?”

She goes by without waiting for an answer.

The face (the _boy_ ) at the window doesn’t return. Sherlock shakes his head and carries on up the path, meeting a bemused-looking Mrs Hudson in the entrance where she’s holding the door open for him. She lets it close when he steps through.

“I think we’ll be okay here,” she says, “for a while, anyway. Nice and anonymous. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

Sherlock says nothing, counting windows in his head on the mental picture of Baker Street Court that he’s just saved, quickly working out that the boy he saw must be his new next door neighbour.

Interesting.

 

* * *

 

When John walks to school in the morning, he looks back towards home, to the windows of the flat next to his and finds them covered – blocked entirely, in fact – by pieces of cardboard.

He shakes his head at that bit of eccentricity and carries on, enjoying the crunch of his feet through unblemished snow and wondering if he might see a new boy today at school.

 

* * *

 

Blood dribbles from John’s nose as he hits the ground and spots of crimson flick onto his shirt. Damn it, he’s going to be the one who has to get that out.

“Shit,” Irene Adler says, sounding shocked rather than gleeful. “He’s actually bleeding! How hard did you hit him, Moran?”

Moran shrugs. “I only gave him a shove, I didn’t even touch his face! Weak, John. That’s pretty weak.”

John opens his mouth to retort and blood drips in, finding its way onto his tongue. It tastes revolting. He spits it at Moran with all his might, wishing he had something contagious.

Moran takes a frantic step backwards to avoid the spray. John takes a moment to be absurdly pleased that he’s managed to do something that surprised the bastard, something that made him lose composure for even a split second.

“Oh, Johnny-boy,” Jim Moriarty croons from behind them, rocking back on his heels, hands in his trouser pockets, “that’s just filthy. You’re an _animal_.”

John glares at Moriarty, removed from getting his hands dirty as he is, far enough away from the action that he didn’t even need to stumble back a pace when John spat. What a glorious sight that would have been.

“A dumb animal,” Moriarty continues, “and dumb animals need to learn their place.”

He looks to Moran and gives him a nod. Irene is looking uncertain, but she says nothing. It’s incongruous, but in that moment, John remembers with startling clarity a time when she was his girlfriend in primary school. For the entirety of Reception, she told anyone who would listen that they were to be married when they “growed up”. She’s lost her lisp and her teeth aren’t crooked now like they used to be. Daddy must have paid good money to get those fixed for her. How secondary school has changed them all.

John looks at her wide kohl-lined eyes darting between himself and Moran, her perfectly straight, brilliantly white teeth biting into her red lower lip.

Maybe it hasn’t changed them so much after all.

Moran advances. John closes his eyes.

“Remember, John,” he hears Moriarty say, “I’ll burn you. I’ll burn the _heart_ out of you.”

The bell rings to signal the end of lunchtime and the start of a new lesson, but John is a million miles away from his maths class.

 

* * *

 

He goes home afterwards, licking his wounds. He couldn’t go to classes in that state, there’d be too many questions. His absence from maths will hardly be noticed, Mr Powell will be too busy looking down the girls’ shirts to take the register. Mrs Lewis is more likely to question John being missing from history, but Henry should cover for him if _he_ can stop looking down Molly Hooper’s shirt for long enough.

The snow is up to his ankles, the bone-deep cold settling in and making itself at home as the ends of his trouser legs get soaked through. He shivers, pulls his coat tighter and shoves his hands in the pockets, wishing he had gloves. He’s almost home now, at least. The front door of Baker Street Court is in view now he’s made it to the quadrangle created by the four tower blocks of flats. Whoever thought to name tower blocks _in London_ after streets in London was obviously a complete wanker – Baker Street Court? Ridiculous.

The inhabitants of the flats refer to the quadrangle as a playground or park. In fairness to playgrounds and parks everywhere, it is a poor excuse for either, housing only one frequently vandalised bench and a stark metal structure with ledges that was probably meant to be a climbing frame before the builders got bored.

John looks over at the playground as he walks past, purely by chance, and sees him. A boy – dark curly hair and pale face – is hanging upside down from one of the bars of the climbing frame, his legs hooked over it.

It’s the boy from last night, John realises with a peculiar lurch of his stomach, the one moving into the flat next door. He frowns, because that lurch? Seemed a little bit too much like something he overhears the girls in his form giggling about when they point out the boys they like. It’s fear, he supposes, left over from that moment when he caught the boy staring at him (when the boy caught _him_ staring).

The boy is fixated on him again, it seems. Even upside down John can tell the boy is looking at him with a sort of focus that’s unnerving.

“Hello,” John calls out. He awkwardly rubs the back of his neck for something to do with his hands, which he is suddenly very aware of despite them having been there for thirteen years already.

No answer. Well, that’s just impolite. John’s still a little way away though, so maybe he hadn’t heard?

Mind made up, John trudges over to the boy, resolutely ignoring the squelch of his shoes and the icy cold that’s spreading further up his legs. He was meant to be going _home_.

The boy continues to stare, not blinking or moving even slightly.

“Hi,” John says as he gets nearer. “You just moved in, right?”

With impossible grace, the boy swings himself upright and jumps down from the climbing frame. As he does, John sees that his feet are bare.

John is about to remark on it when the boy turns to face him. He’s not smiling. John feels his own friendly smile flicker and fade.

The boy is even paler up close, as white as the snow he’s surrounded by. He’s dressed in what looks to be a suit (and not a school uniform either, a proper _suit_ , what the hell) underneath a dark, heavy-looking coat. Said coat is clearly too long for him; he’s positively drowning in it even though he’s taller than John, who draws himself up to his full height when the boy still doesn’t answer.

“Last night,” John tries again, “I saw you out of the window.”

Best to admit to that moment of accidental creepiness so he can stop feeling oddly guilty about it.

The boy considers him, grey eyes bright and gaze sharp. Penetrating, even. It’s hard not to squirm under that sort of scrutiny, so John does. He feels like the boy is looking all the way inside him, teasing out all his secrets, poking at the exposed underbelly he hadn’t meant to be on display.

That searching gaze strips him from head to toe and then settles around the centre of his face. John realises with a jolt that there is probably still some dried blood under his nose, and wipes at it with his sleeve. It’s already filthy, he reasons.

The boy blinks for the first time at that, rapidly, maybe six or seven times. He shakes his head as if to clear it.

“Yes,” he finally replies, a strange creak to his voice.

John waits, expecting him to expand on his answer. He doesn’t.

“You’re…” John starts, stops, tries again, “you’re not wearing any shoes.”

“An excellent deduction.”

Bristling at the boy’s tone, John goes to cross his arms over his chest, and then remembers why he shouldn’t do that when everything suddenly _aches_. “I’d like to see you do better,” he replies shortly, embarrassed by his aborted movement.

“How many bullies?”

John’s eyebrows draw together. “Sorry?”

“One that hit you, and some bystanders, most likely. You won’t tell anyone at school who’s doing it, so it’s just getting worse. You have a distant mother who’s more interested in her new boyfriend than she is in you, so she doesn’t know anything about it. You’ve got an older sister but you won’t go to her for help, probably because she resents you, maybe because you don’t like her drinking.”

John gapes at the boy, stunned. “How do you know all that?”

“There’s blood under your nose, and you look to be in a fair amount of pain with your movements, but from the way you’re holding yourself up still, I’d say there was only one hitting you and one or two watching. There’s always a lookout in groups of bullies, one who’s even more cowardly than the others so he doesn’t get involved. You haven’t told anyone who’s doing it, because you’ve come home in the middle of a school day, rather than going to your headmaster.”

 “And how did you know about my mum and sister?” John asks, fighting that overwhelming urge again to cross his arms over his chest in defence.

The boy huffs through his nose in a parody of a laugh. “I don’t _know_ , I _notice._ I can tell your mother is distant because your hair is too long, your shirt is going grey when it should be white and there’s a stain on the collar that isn’t blood from today – most mothers wouldn’t let their sons go to school like this, no, you’re doing the washing yourself. Badly, I must say. And I know there’s a new boyfriend in the picture because that’s usually the cause of a distant mother, and this area is infamous for its high population of divorced or unwed mothers.

“Your older sister was a bit of a leap: your backpack is a hand-me-down. It’s not obviously a girl’s bag, but it’s not a bag a boy would choose for himself either. So, older sister that resents you because older siblings generally do, and I got the drinking habit from the number of bottles I heard you carrying out this morning for recycling with the other household waste – too many to just be your mother’s or she’d be in hospital awaiting a liver transplant if that was a regular occurrence.”

John has no idea what to say. Well, other than: “That was fantastic.”

“Really, you think so?” the boy looks surprised.

“Of course it was, it was brilliant!”

“That’s not what people normally say.”

“What do people normally say?”

The left corner of the boy’s mouth lifts briefly. “Piss off.”

John laughs, and the boy joins in after a moment, albeit with less mirth.

“Well, _I_ think it’s brilliant. I’m John,” he says, sticking a hand out, “John Watson.”

The boy looks at his hand like he’s not sure what to do with it, then seems to come to a decision, taking John’s hand in a loose grasp and giving it what could loosely be called a shake. His fingers are cold and stiff, and John is quick to let the boy’s hand go. “Sherlock Holmes.”

Unusual name, so of course it fits this strange boy perfectly. Unlike that coat of his. Speaking of which…

“Your hands are freezing,” John says, “and your feet must be worse! Don’t you have shoes or gloves?”

The boy – Sherlock – shakes his head. “I don’t feel cold,” he says, frowning.

“You do to me! How can you not feel cold in this weather?”

“I suppose I’ve forgotten how,” Sherlock murmurs. “You don’t have gloves either,” he points out, like an accusation.

“No, but at least I’ve got shoes. Here, try mine and if they fit then I can go get you a pair.”

John walks over to the bench, ignoring the newly sprayed ‘Benzi’ on it (that Paul Benson from 37 Baker Street is a right knobhead) and starts unlacing his (soaking wet) shoes. Sherlock follows him, and sits down almost tentatively, putting a good metre of space between them. He immediately draws his feet up and out of the snow, knees to his chest as he watches John as if he was the most interesting thing in the world.

“There you go,” John says, dropping the shoes the right way round in front of Sherlock with a grin.

Sherlock delicately pokes his right foot into the right shoe and then does the same with the left. He gives his toes an experimental wiggle, like you do in Clarks when they want to see if the shoes fit. John fights the impulse to lean down and press his thumb against them.

“They fit,” Sherlock says quietly, looking at his feet with the sort of intensity that a pair of shoes never really warrants.

“Great, well, your feet must be much colder than mine, so if you want you can wear those home and I’ll—”

Sherlock has already slipped the shoes back off and deposited them (the right way round) in front of John. He stands up suddenly, looking up at the sky. What is he looking at? Nothing interesting about the sky today, just clouds full of snow obscuring all traces of the sun. Although they do look to be clearing a bit now.

“I have to go,” Sherlock says.

“Oh,” John fails to keep the disappointment from that single syllable. “Okay, well, how about I just run in and fetch you some shoes? Would that be okay?”

Sherlock shifts from foot to foot, snow barely crunching beneath him as he does, like there’s no weight to him. There probably isn’t, John thinks; he’s skinny as a rake, looks like he needs a good meal or four.

“I expect so,” Sherlock says.

“Great! I’ll go get them then, be right back. Don’t go anywhere!”

A nod from Sherlock. John takes off running, sparing a quick glance to see Sherlock behind him, waiting in the playground but fidgeting on the spot like he wants to be somewhere else. John had better move quickly.

He dashes up the stairs when he gets into Baker Street Court (the lift is out of order again) and digs out his key as he goes. He bounds into the flat, empty at this time of day – mum at work and Harry at school – and retrieves a pair of trainers. They’ll hardly go with Sherlock’s suit, but he’s in too much of a rush to be choosy.

His haste proves futile anyway. When he runs back to the quadrangle, panting and beginning to go red in the face, there is no sign of Sherlock. John’s arm drops to his side, the trainers dangling loosely from his fingers.

He’s surprised by how let down he feels.

John leaves the shoes under the bench where (with a bit of luck) they won’t be seen and get nicked by any of the local kids, hoping that Sherlock comes back and is observant enough to spot them. He tucks the laces in so they won’t get wet and then he goes home, where he realises that all that running about really hasn’t made his various injuries feel any _better_. Funny how he didn’t really feel it while he was doing the actual running.

Lying on his bed and trying to keep very still so as not to jostle anything further, John wonders where Sherlock went. It’s not possible for him to have just gone home, he and John would have crossed paths on the way.

It’s strange, that, he thinks: Sherlock moving into 221B. John didn’t even know old Mrs Sykes was leaving. Her bedroom used to be on the other side of his wall and he often heard her pottering about, playing her old records from the wartime. He used to enjoy those, actually.

He wonders who is in that bedroom now, Sherlock or the old woman he lives with. Feeling silly, he reaches out to knock on the wall. He jumps about a foot in the air when there’s a knock back no more than five seconds later.

He sits up on the bed, pressing his ear to the wall. No further sound comes and John is just about to take his head away from the wall when the violin starts up. It’s a beautiful piece of music, sad and wistful, and at first John thinks it must be a recording it’s so well-played, but then the music suddenly stops and a voice makes a growl of frustration before the piece starts again from the beginning.

Someone is playing the violin in 221B.

John contemplates that growl – male, young, not deep enough to be a man’s voice. _Sherlock_.

It must be Sherlock playing the violin.

John lies back down, listening intently, almost holding his breath as Sherlock plays. After quarter of an hour Sherlock stops that piece for good after several stops and restarts, and he changes to a piece John recognises as Bach or Mozart, he’s not sure which, and plays it through note-perfect before beginning another. John can’t believe his luck, he’s got a prodigy for a neighbour. He laughs, missing the music faltering for a moment as he does, and then lets the new melody (soft, languid, soothing) lull him to sleep. He’s so relaxed that he forgets to question just how Sherlock _did_ get back into his flat that quickly without John seeing him.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock plays for hours, forgetting himself and the world, remembering only notation and time and key signatures.  _Legato_ , _staccato. Adagio_ , _andante_ , _allegro._

Everything he had tried to delete when he decided he would never play again.

He plays for so long – caught up in the music flowing and swirling around him, colours and meanings and everything he could never delete, only store somewhere less painful – that he misses the door, the gentle footsteps, the soft intake of breath, the quiet presence in the entrance to his room.

When he finally stops playing, it isn’t silent. It’s never silent, not to Sherlock.

Waiting for Mrs Hudson to speak, Sherlock lowers the violin, sets it in its case and puts away the bow. No ritual or ceremony, not when he’s being watched.

“That was lovely, dear. I’ve missed your violin. Not at three in the morning, mind.”

“Is it three in the morning?” he asks, turning to look at the smile he can hear in her voice and answering it with a customary frown. It could be that late, for all he knows. Time means very little to him these days.

Mrs Hudson only tilts her head slightly, smile in place, unwavering. “I’d be cross if it was.”

 

* * *

 

Harry’s arrival breaks John out of his restful slumber when she crashes through the front door, whirlwind that she is. John sits up, startled. The music from 221B has stopped.

He gets out of bed, meaning to run to the bathroom to clean up before their mother gets home. It wouldn’t do for her to see him battered and bloodied. Unfortunately, he has to go through the living room to get to the bathroom, so Harry _is_ going to see him. Bugger.

“Jesus,” she says when he’s _almost_ managed to sneak past her (she was rifling through the cupboards for cereal, Harry’s post-school habit), “what the hell happened to you?”

“Slipped in the snow.” John shrugs, attempts to brush past, and she catches his arm, making him hiss at the sudden flare of pain. She doesn’t pull her hand back though.

“Liar. It’s those bastards at school, isn’t it?” It’s not a question. “Fucking hell, you need to start standing up for yourself, John. Like I did.”

And with that, she releases his arm and goes back to looking for the cornflakes. There are none, she had the last of them yesterday, but John’s not going to the shop today. If she wants more, she can bloody well go herself.

He doesn’t tell her that half the reason they’re bullying him at all is because he’s John Watson, because he’s got a “dyke” for an older sister and so he must be a “bender” himself. They aren’t close, Sherlock was right: she does resent him, and he does hate her drinking. But he’s not going to make her feel guilty by telling her _why_ he gets bullied. It’s not her fault.

The blood swirls down the plughole where, diluted with soap, it turns a faded rusty orange colour. It flakes off easily enough.

John looks at himself in the tiny mirror. They’re clever, he’ll give them that. Moran really hadn’t caused the nosebleed (just a happy coincidence), because he’s never hit John’s face, never split his lip or given him a black eye – too obvious.

No, the marks are all under his clothes. John unbuttons his shirt, sees his reflection giving a grimace as he reveals a plethora of green, yellow, brown, blue, and purple. He’s a rainbow under his shirt, Moran would be so pleased to have decorated him thusly, the very symbol of what he despises. _Queer._

The shirt may be salvageable, but he can’t leave it in the sink to soak. His mum will see it. Hopefully, Fuck-off-Alan will come over again to take her out and he’ll get the opportunity later… Unlikely. Fuck-off-Alan only has so much spare cash as an out-of-work builder with a back problem, after all.

John sighs, balls the shirt up and goes back to his room, where he throws the crumpled blood-spattered mess under his bed. It’s not like his mum tidies in here now anyway. His secret is safe.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, John walks through the playground on his way to school. He looks over and… the shoes are no longer underneath the bench. In their place, there’s a small Rubik’s cube that needs solving. John picks it up, dusts the snow off, and pockets it with a short laugh. He grins throughout the rest of his journey into school, and throughout the day whenever he touches it in his right trouser pocket, like a talisman.

When Moran shoves him into a locker between the last two classes of the day, the cube gets crushed between his thigh and the unyielding metal door, one corner digging into his flesh. Another bruise for the collection.

After that, John goes back to touching the Swiss Army knife in his blazer pocket – a much more familiar talisman.

 

* * *

 

_Stab. Stab._

“I’ll burn you,” John says. “I’ll burn the heart out of you.”

_Stab._

“Are you afraid?” he asks the tree. “Are you going to scream?”

The silver birch in the middle of the playground doesn’t answer, it doesn’t look afraid and it doesn’t scream as John stabs it for a fourth time with his knife.

Parroting Moriarty’s words to him doesn’t make him feel better, it just makes him feel sick. John’s pretty sure if he ever _did_ stab Moriarty he wouldn’t say anything at all, he’d just do it.

There’s a rustling movement from behind him and John freezes. It’s ten o’clock at night; there shouldn’t be any kids around now, or at least, not hanging around in the playground. Street corners and back alleys, maybe. John himself would not ordinarily be out quite this late, but Harry and his mum are both out on Tuesdays so he has the night to himself.

He turns around sharply at another crunching noise and sees Sherlock is standing on one of the ledges on top of the climbing frame. He’s missing his too-long coat, but he’s still dressed in a dark suit – the same one from the day before if John’s not mistaken, it looks like the same ivory shirt that only serves to highlight his unnatural pallor. On his feet he has a pair of white trainers. John’s pair of white trainers.

“Good evening, John,” Sherlock says, dropping down neatly to sit on the edge of the climbing frame.

“Hi,” John waves the hand that isn’t grasping the knife. He folds the blade and slips it into the pocket of his jeans with as much nonchalance as he can muster. Sherlock’s keen eyes track the movement, of course. John supposes he’s already seen him stabbing a tree and not run off screaming, so hiding the fact that he has the knife is a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Sherlock smiles, just a little, as if he’s just followed every thought in John’s head. “Have you solved the puzzle yet?”

“Solved what puzz- Oh!” The Rubik’s cube. John pulls it out of his jacket; he’s nowhere near solving it, hasn’t even managed to get one side yet. John climbs up to sit beside Sherlock and holds the cube out to him with a sheepish grin. “I’m hopeless,” he says. “How do you do it?”

Sherlock takes the cube, icy fingers just barely brushing against John’s, enough to cause him to shiver. “There’s mathematical solutions, but I think I’d be wasting my time even if I _could_ be bothered with explaining them to you,” John starts to protest at that, but Sherlock continues. “You should start with the corners, like this, and then…”

He begins twisting and turning the cube in his hands, still muttering quietly as he does it, but John’s not listening to him, he’s watching Sherlock’s hands as they expertly manipulate the puzzle until all six faces show solid colours. It took him less than two minutes.

When he finishes, he holds the cube up with a flourish, “Like that.”

“Amazing,” John breathes.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him, “Do you know you do that out loud?” he asks, sounding amused.

John shuts his mouth. He can feel his ears turning red, and not just from the cold. “Sorry, I’ll shut up.”

“No, it’s…” Sherlock stops and smiles. “It’s… fine.”

Sherlock turns the cube deftly in his hands again, mixing it up, and gives it back to John. “Have another go,” he says.

They sit in silence for a time while John tries again to solve the cube, the only sounds in the park the buzzing from the lamppost above them and Mr Rogers from number 61 putting his bins out.

“I don’t have friends,” Sherlock says, all of a sudden.

John looks up at him and tilts his head to one side to consider Sherlock: his strange face with its harsh (delicate) lines, the curiously vulnerable curve of his upper lip. John wonders if it’s possible for someone to look lonely just from the way their face is constructed.

“Why not?”

“Does there have to be a reason?”

“Everyone has friends, Sherlock.”

That statement gets a haughty sniff. “I don’t. And I’m just telling you so that you understand. We can’t be friends.”

John’s feels a downward tug in his chest, and thinks he now knows the meaning of the expression about hearts sinking. “Oh,” he says.

“In fact, I came out here to be alone.”

“So did I, and I’ve lived here longer, so I should stay and you can go somewhere else.”

Sherlock says nothing for a long moment, looks down at his (not his: _borrowed_ ) shoes and then at the Rubik’s cube in John’s hands. “I don’t want to though,” he says, and he sounds confused.

John isn’t sure what he means by that. He looks at his watch and finds it’s nearly twenty past ten. Mum would go spare if she knew he’d been out this late. “Well, I should probably be going in now anyway, I’ve got school in the morning.”

“Ugh,” Sherlock scoffs. “School, school’s boring.”

“What school do you go to?” John asks. Sherlock sounds posh, like the boys that go the boarding school on the other side of town. He doesn’t sound like he should be living in a place like Baker Street Court, certainly.

“I don’t.”

“Don’t go to school? But- but you must do! How old are you?”

Sherlock shrugs. “Thirteen, give or take.”

“What do you mean, ‘give or take’? Don’t you know? When’s your birthday?”

“I don’t remember.”

Just like he didn’t remember how to be cold. John shakes his head. “Don’t your parents remember?”

“They’re dead.”

Sherlock’s reply is toneless, and his face is even more bland. Purposely so, John would say, so he pointedly _doesn’t_ say “I’m sorry”. He remembers too many people saying that to his mum at Nan’s wake, and it only made her cry harder when they weren’t looking.

“Who’s that woman you live with, then?” he asks.

“Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock says, and there’s fondness lurking in the words, the first John’s really heard from him. “Friend of the family.”

“Oh, right.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence, and John jerks a thumb at Baker Street Court. “I really should go in,” he says, holding out the Rubik’s cube. “Here.”

Sherlock glances down. “Keep it.” He nods at John’s hand. “You’ve almost finished the green side, look.”

John does look. One more turn, and _click_ – he has a solid green face. John laughs in surprise, looks up to share the moment with Sherlock, and sees that he’s already gone.

 

* * *

 

Later that night, just as he’s getting into bed, John hears raised voices from next door. It’s Sherlock, he realises, almost-but-not-quite-shouting at the woman he lives with (Mrs Hudson, he had called her). She shouts back, louder than him but frailer. There’s a tremble to her thin, aged voice.

John only hears bit and scraps, but he picks out one clear question from Sherlock: “Do I have to get it for _myself_?”

The flat next door goes quiet then, but it takes John a long time to get to sleep after that.

 

* * *

 

The hand that runs through his hair after midnight is unexpected, but not unfamiliar. Sherlock rolls over on his mattress to see Mrs Hudson, arm outstretched and looking stricken. “I thought you were asleep,” she admits.

“I don’t sleep.”

She nods, moving towards the door, melting back into the shadows. “I’m sorry about earlier,” she says. “You know I’m trying my best.”

Sherlock says nothing, knowing she will take it for the concession that it is. He does know what his secrets cost her.

“Have you heard from Mycroft lately?” she asks, sighing at the predictable twist of Sherlock’s mouth at hearing that name.

“Nothing,” he says bitterly. “Nothing from the research facility, either.”

“What about your end? Any breakthroughs with your experiments?”

“None.”

Silence. Sherlock shuts his eyes against the barrage of questions he can hear her deliberately not asking, knowing the action is totally useless as any kind of barrier to such things.

“John seems like a nice boy,” Mrs Hudson says eventually, and she walks out of the room before Sherlock can ask how she could possibly know about John.

She’s a perceptive old girl, he’ll say that. 


	2. Chapter 2

John has learned to be quick in the changing room. If he’s quick, no one sees the bruises. If no one sees the bruises, no one asks questions about them. Not that anyone would care. Most of them know already, and he knows from experience that no one will lift a finger to help him.

As John pulls his rugby shirt on, he catches sight of Sebastian Moran on the other side of the changing room, unbuttoning his shirt and laughing at something Moriarty has just said. Finished with the buttons, he tugs the shirt off carelessly and hangs it on the peg in front of him. John looks at his bare torso for a moment: tanned, finely muscled, no bruises, light dusting of blond hair, a scar low on his abdomen from God-knows-what. He cuts an imposing, powerful figure already, despite only being fourteen years old. With a birthday at the end of September, he’s one of the tallest, oldest boys in their year. John’s the opposite.

He is scant milliseconds from looking away when Moran happens to glance over and sees him staring. John turns his head so fast that he thinks he must have given himself whiplash. It’s not soon enough.

“Oi,” shouts Moran, “stop looking at me, you freak!”

The other boys – all of them are Moran’s friends, _Christ_ , he’s in trouble this time – snigger and jeer. Several of them whistle suggestively.

“Fucking nancy-boy queer.”

“Oh, shit, is he hard?”

“He shouldn’t be allowed to change in here with us, it’s sick. He’s been looking at Moran, what about the rest of us?”

“Backs against the wall, lads!”

John’s face burns with shame as he slowly, mechanically swaps his school shoes for his football boots. Moriarty’s group all jostle him as they leave for the pitch, and Moran shoves him hardest of all.

“Seriously, Watson,” Moriarty laughs, the last to go by, “stop looking at him and thinking about him or he’ll end up knocking your teeth down your throat. I’d hate you to be in the way when my little Rottweiler gets caught in one of his rages.”

John hunches in on himself and ties the laces of his boots. Mike Stamford doesn’t look at him as he lumbers out of the changing room after them, already pink and splotchy in the face and breathing hard. Mike is an old target, dropped like a toy they’ve grown bored of now that they’ve decided John is more fun. John bets he can’t believe his luck.

Henry Knight gives him a fleeting sympathetic look as he passes out the door too, and then John is left alone in the changing room.

At least Mr Wiltshire will be watching them during PE, he thinks. They won’t be able to get away with too many obvious fouls during the game.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


John’s school trousers are missing when he trudges back into the changing room an hour later, cold, muddy and sore. He hunts for them under the bench where he changed and under the one opposite, but he knows what’s happened. He can hear the laughter. He hears it nearly all the way home as he walks with his blazer barely covering his PE shorts, just brushing the backs of his (weak, spindly) thighs.

It’s snowing again.

Fucking snow.

 

 

Sherlock is sitting on the top ledge of the climbing frame that night when John goes out to breathe air that isn’t cloying and heady (full of alcohol and cigarette fumes).  Sherlock is dressed only in his white shirt and trousers, missing his jacket and coat, with John’s trainers adorning his feet. His breaths are visible like John’s are, warm wisps like smoke coming out of his mouth and nostrils. His shirt sleeves are rolled up to the elbows, but there are no goosepimples on his bare forearms.

He watches with mild interest as John approaches him and flops down onto one of the lower ledges beneath Sherlock.

John fishes in his pocket and holds up the Rubik’s cube, not looking at Sherlock. “Here,” he says, “I finished it.”

Sherlock smiles, takes the cube and runs a finger over the blue side. “Well done, John.”

There’s a loud, wet-sounding rumble. Sherlock pitches forward with a grimace and John realises it was his stomach. “Christ,” John says, “haven’t you had dinner?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Case. Can’t eat when I’m on a case, slows me down.”

“Case?” John frowns.

“I’m a consulting detective,” Sherlock says, waving a dismissive hand and straightening back up.

“A detective. Like a private eye?”

Sherlock scowls at that. “No, like a _consulting detective_. I’m the only one in the world.” He puffs up slightly as he continues. “I invented the job. I help the police when they’re out of their depth. Which is always.”

“That’s rubbish,” John says. “You’re what, thirteen? The police don’t listen to kids.”

The scowl intensifies, deep lines marring Sherlock’s skin as he wilfully contorts his facial muscles to convey utter disdain. “How do you know? When we met, I knew all about you. I know all about most people, just seconds after meeting them. _Some_ people recognise that as a useful skill.”

“I know because my uncle’s a detective inspector.”

Sherlock smirks, “Ah yes, DI Lestrade,” he says. “You’re his favourite nephew, a stand-in for his estranged son who lives in Southampton with another man now. Did you know that?”

John gapes.

“How do I know your uncle?” Sherlock voices the question for him. “I went to see him today about the boy who died in the swimming pool a couple of weeks ago. I saw a picture of you on his desk while I was in his office; it wasn’t a difficult leap with what I’d already deduced about his son.”

“I didn’t know I had a cousin,” John says, dazed.

Sherlock looks uncomfortable and fiddles with the Rubik’s cube in silence for a moment.

“My brother, Mycroft, he gave me this,” he says, when he deems the pause to have gone on long enough. “I don’t see him much now.” He doesn’t look sad about that as he extends the cube in John’s direction again. “I said you could keep it.”

John takes the puzzle, and Sherlock’s stomach rumbles again, louder and more insistent this time. He closes his eyes, wrapping his arms tightly around his stomach.

“We’ve got some leftover pizza,” John offers. “I can heat it up for you, if you want?”

Sherlock blinks at him and then his eyes narrow like _John_ is the puzzle he’s trying to solve now. “You would do that, for me?”

“Sure. You’re my-”

John stops. He was going to say ‘mate’, but Sherlock’s weird and not very nice and he’s already said they can’t be friends. And he smells funny, like _really_ funny. He smells like Nan’s room in the nursing home used to smell. John wrinkles his nose.

“I’m what?” Sherlock asks, then rolls his eyes. “I know I smell, you don’t need to tell me.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything! And you’re, well, you’re my neighbour. You’re interesting too, you’re working with my uncle on one of his cases! Is it a murder?”

Sherlock sniffs. “I’m not actually involved in the case, as such. You were right, the police don’t listen to _kids_. Although Lestrade’s my best bet. There’s something wrong here, I know it. Carl Powers didn’t drown, by all accounts he could swim strongly enough that he didn’t need extra practice, so what was he doing there at that time in the evening? And where were his shoes?”

“His shoes?”

“His shoes were never found: why? It doesn’t make sense, if he’d drowned then they would be there.”

“So you think… the killer took his shoes?”

Sherlock looks at him sharply. “Yes,” he says at length, giving John a thorough appraisal. “It seems Lestrade’s not the only one with a brain in your family.”

It’s a compliment wrapped up in an insult, and John wants to frown, but there’s a sort of golden warmth unfurling in his chest. Sherlock is starting to respect him. No one in John’s life respects him. Except his uncle, perhaps.

Although not enough to tell John he has a cousin, apparently.

“I have to go-” John begins and Sherlock snorts.

“You have to go phone your uncle, I know.”

Right again. John grins at him, still amazed by his strange new… friend. It doesn’t matter what Sherlock says, how weird he is, how odd he smells; John considers him a friend, and that’s just about irreversible.

Sherlock smiles back hesitantly, mouth closed, but his eyes are softer now.

 “Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow?” John purposefully makes it a question, but his voice pitches that bit _too_ high at the end and it comes out as a question that’s over-eager.

Sherlock’s smile hasn’t faded like John was half-expecting it to, and Sherlock actually nods. “I’ll be around after dark. In all likelihood.”

“Great, I mean…” John waves the Rubik’s cube at him awkwardly. “Cool. See you tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow,” Sherlock agrees.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Harry is just getting off the phone with someone when John gets in. She glares at him when he stands in the hallway, waiting to use the phone.

“Piss off,” she says, one hand over the mouthpiece. “I’m not done yet.”

“You were just saying goodbye,” John points out.

She huffs, shakes her head and uncovers the phone again. “Listen, I’ve really got to go now, Clara, boy-wonder wants to use the phone. Yeah.” She listens for a moment and smiles. “You too, see you tomorrow.”

She depresses the button on the cradle to end the call and holds the phone out to John. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” John says to her retreating back – she’s already headed to her room.

With an odd squirming sensation in his stomach, he dials his uncle’s number.

After five rings, a weary voice answers. “Hello?”

Finished with work for the night then. No more “Detective Inspector Lestrade speaking”.

“Hi, Uncle Greg, it’s John.”

“John!” the tinny voice perks up, tired monotone falling away. “I haven’t heard from you in ages-” He pauses and then continues, voice hushed. “Is it your mum? Are you all okay?”

“We’re fine,” John assures him quickly. “I just… Do I have any cousins?”

“Cousins?” Greg laughs. “What are you on about, John? You know I don’t-”

Another pause, a rush of static for a drawn in breath. John bites his lip, anxiously twisting the phone wire around his right index finger.

“Who’ve you been speaking to?” Greg asks, with a sharpness to his words that John has never heard before. “Did your mum-”

“So it’s true,” John interrupts, “I have a cousin, don’t I? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“John, it’s complicated, I don’t see Anthony these days…”

“Because he lives with a man?”

Yet _another_ pause, and John can hear, he can _feel_ his heartbeat in his ears.

“Who’ve you been speaking to, John?” Greg asks, softly this time – a plea.

“It doesn’t matter,” John says and his voice is trembling, his throat is clogging and he can’t cry on the phone with his uncle, he just _can’t_. “Answer my question.”

“John, I haven’t seen Anthony in almost thirty years. Listen to me: I was only seventeen when he was born, I didn’t even know Michelle was pregnant. We weren’t all that serious, and when her parents moved to Dorset before she started to show, I didn’t keep in touch.”

There’s a crackle down the line, a heavy sigh.

“She phoned me two years ago, must have got hold of my number when I started to gain some recognition with the Met, I don’t know. She dropped a couple of bombshells on me that day: I had a twenty-eight year old son, and he was having a civil partnership ceremony in a month’s time, with a _man_ , and did I want to come?”

Greg scoffs. “How could I?” he asks. “I didn’t know him, I’d never been given the chance to know him. How could I turn up at this major time in his life, at this _happy_ time in his life and demand a place in it?”

“Didn’t he want his dad to be there?” John whispers. “I- I think I would, if- if it were me. I mean, if I was getting married, or- or…”

“Oh John,” Greg sighs again. “Is that what this is all about?”

“No, I-”

“Look, you’re nearly fourteen now, you’re becoming a man. And I know that’s got to be tough without your dad around.”

It’s taking much more effort now to hold back the tears.

“I know I’ve been busy with work lately,” Greg continues, “but you’re like a son to me. We should catch up soon; you could come and stay with me, it would only be a short tube ride across to school. We could talk properly then, man to man.”

John doesn’t answer.

“John? John, about Anthony… Michelle sent me a photograph. Paul makes him very happy, and as his father, that makes me very happy. Do you understand? It’s all fine, to me.”

John still can’t speak, his throat’s too tight and Greg will know he’s on the verge of crying.

“We’ll arrange that visit soon, okay?” Greg keeps going, no doubt already aware why John isn’t answering. “You could come stay during half-term, maybe. And you can get some things off your chest. You can tell me anything, John, you know that.”

“Sure,” John croaks. He sniffs, clears his throat. “That would be great. I have to go, Uncle Greg.”

“John…”

“No, really, I have to go. Mum wants me. Bye.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


As he puts on his coat, Sherlock hears something odd and frowns. He puts his ear to the wall and is met with the sort of gasped, hitching breaths that come from someone trying valiantly to keep the tears in and failing. Not someone, _John_.

Sherlock dithers for the first time in his life. He is supposed to be going to the pool tonight, to gather evidence relating to the Carl Powers case.

He _is_ supposed to be doing that, but John is crying next door. Worse: John is not just crying next door, he’s trying _not_ to.

It makes Sherlock feel… he searches around in his memory for the word and comes up lacking. It makes him feel uncomfortable, that’s true enough.

Sherlock ponders the best way to stop someone crying, again coming up lacking. Emotions are not his forte.

_Forte_ , he thinks, and realises he’s hit on a possible solution to the problem.

He hears a choked sob and stops eyeing his scarf and eyes the violin case instead. An hour won’t hurt. Carl Powers can’t get more dead than he already is, and the local police have already no doubt ruined the crime scene to the point where they can do no more damage, if they’re still poking around at this time. In fact, if he’s going to have to sneak in, it would be better to go later when there will be fewer people around.

Sherlock plucks the violin from its case, fingers of his left hand curled around the neck, his right hand taking up the bow.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_Romeo + Juliet_ is, quite simply, the most dire film John has ever been forced to watch at school.

He can’t understand the point of modernising the setting but not the language. They should have done both, he thinks, made it a real modern adaptation. It would be easier to understand, but it would still be a load of rubbish. All the girls are giggling like it’s some amazing love story. They don’t seem to care that in the play (and it will be coming up in the film too), Romeo and Juliet both die at the end. They both take their own lives. Surely that’s not how love is supposed to go?

Juliet was thirteen in the play, John remembers, the same age as him.

He shakes his head, concentrating again on the book in front of him. He has to squint at the pages, at the back of the class and concealed in darkness as he is for the film, but he’s determined to finish learning Morse code before he sees Sherlock later so he can give him the booklet to learn it too.

By the end of the lesson, he’s finished making a cheatsheet for himself.

He looks up in time to see the star-crossed lovers kiss before Romeo succumbs to the poison and Juliet shoots herself in the head.

As John walks home from school after that, he sees ( _notices_ ) three different couples: an old man and woman on a bench holding hands, their heads bent close together; a pair of teenagers snogging furiously in the alley by the corner shop; and Henry Knight and Molly Hooper sharing an awkward goodbye hug at the bus stop.

He watches all of them from a distance, shy and uncertain, blushing when he’s caught by the teenagers who reluctantly break apart for the mere seconds it takes to tell John to go somewhere else if he wants a free show.

Eyes cast down, he hurries away, and only realises later on that – for all that their hair was long – the teenagers were both boys.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


At quarter to eight when John goes out that night, Sherlock is waiting for him in the playground, sat in his customary position at the top of the climbing frame, king of all he surveys.

John stands at the bottom and looks up at Sherlock to call a greeting when something dark and soft drops onto his face. “Oomph.”

Removing the offending object, he sees it’s a pair of black leather gloves.

“It won’t do for your hands to get cold, John,” Sherlock says, and his mouth curves up into a smile that’s kind rather than mocking.

He seems to be in good spirits; there’s something relaxed about his posture as he drops down beside John.

“Do I smell better today?” he asks, leaning forward as if presenting himself for inspection.

John leans forward too, gives him a curious sniff and finds that yes, yes he does. There’s still a musky odour that clings to him, but it’s like old books today – crisp and warm and _nice_. Not stale and cold like yesterday. He’s wearing something different too, John notices; the white shirt has been swapped for a dark blue one.

“Much better,” John says, nodding in approval, and Sherlock’s still smiling.

“Hungry?” he asks, and John can hardly believe the change in him. There’s a sort of spark in Sherlock’s eyes that John has never seen. He’s still pale and he’s still all shadows and angles, but he looks almost _healthy_ in a way that he hasn’t since John met him.

“Starving, actually.” Mum _and_ Harry are out again tonight and he hasn’t eaten yet because he was planning to ask Sherlock to come in for dinner.

“Excellent, put your gloves on and let’s go,” Sherlock says, clapping his own glove-free hands.

John laughs and does as he’s told. “Go where?”

“I know a place.”

 Sherlock flips his coat collar up and John envies him that damn coat and his striking looks, his obvious intelligence and his air of mystery and importance. He’d have no trouble getting a girlfriend, John thinks.

“Come on.” Sherlock is holding a hand out to him expectantly. The hand waves with impatience when John doesn’t take it at once.

“Boys don’t hold hands,” John says and Sherlock’s eyebrows draw together, his hand dropping slightly.

“Don’t they?”

John blinks. He looks at Sherlock’s (angry? hurt?) frown, and thinks of Moran shoving him. The boys calling him queer. He thinks of Uncle Greg’s gentle voice on the phone, that photo he’s never seen of his cousin and his cousin’s partner. He imagines them smiling in it, arms around each other. Happy.

“Okay,” he says, and takes Sherlock’s left hand in his right. The leather of his new glove stops him feeling the cold palm that presses against his.

The “place” that Sherlock knows is a little restaurant just outside the town centre, a ten minute walk away. John’s never been before because it’s getting towards an area of town even _his_ mum advised him to stay out of.

They’re quiet throughout the journey, Sherlock determined and John trusting. Their hands stay clasped together until they enter the restaurant.

“John,” Sherlock says when they walk in, with a quick lift of his chin at the man behind the counter. The bell above the door signals their arrival. “This is Angelo’s.”

“Sherlock!” calls the man – Angelo, John supposes.

Sherlock nods as Angelo approaches, offers his hand stiffly for a shake, but Angelo has other ideas. He sweeps Sherlock off the floor in a bear hug the moment he reaches him and swings him around for a good thirty seconds, despite Sherlock’s vicious protestations.

“Put me down or I’ll retract my statement!” he snarls and Angelo laughs good-naturedly, setting him back down and ruffling his hair.

“Sherlock here got me off a murder charge,” Angelo says by way of explanation to John, who is stifling laughter at Sherlock’s obvious displeasure at his treatment.

“You still got charged with breaking and entering,” Sherlock reminds him, attempting to flatten his hair. The mop of curls was unruly to start with.

Angelo smiles, all his teeth on display and a hint of gold at the back. “Table for two?” he asks sweetly.

He directs them to the table by the window without waiting for an answer. Sherlock sits with a huff, immediately shedding his coat and folding it across the back of his chair. John sits across from him with a small amount of trepidation chasing itself around his belly – it’s hardly a posh establishment, but John hasn’t been to dinner anywhere but McDonald’s in the last two years. And before that he only went to that nice Italian place for someone’s birthday.

Angelo looks at them both for a moment, taps a finger against his chin and seems to come to a decision. “I’ll get a candle for the table for you and your date,” he says and then winks. “It’s more romantic.”

John’s jaw drops. “I’m not his-”

He glances at Sherlock who’s looking out the window, like he hasn’t heard or just doesn’t care at all. Angelo has already bustled off. Well. “I- never mind,” John finishes lamely.

Sherlock’s attention snaps back to him then. “Have whatever you want, John,” he says, pushing a menu across the table with both hands. “On me.”

Angelo returns, places the candle (off-white, misshapen, wax dried in runs down the sides from where it’s been lit before) on the table, gives them a thumbs up and departs again.

John lifts the menu for something to do with his hands, ostensibly also to decide what to order, and notices Sherlock is watching him, his own menu discarded. “Aren’t you going to order?” John asks, using his menu to gesture at Sherlock’s.

“Case.” Sherlock shifts his left arm to cover the menu as if it gets rid of the problem. “Slows me down, remember?”

“Oh. How’s it going?”

Angelo comes to take John’s order personally while Sherlock is complaining that the police _still_ won’t let him into the pool where Carl Powers died so he can have a look around.

Sherlock stops mid-rant and glowers at Angelo for interrupting him with a discreet cough.

“What’ll it be?” Angelo asks, pen poised over a grubby notebook.

“He’ll have the Hawaiian pizza, light on the pineapple,” Sherlock says before John can answer.

John opens his mouth and Angelo turns to him with a knowing smile. “That right?” he asks and John can only nod, because (of course) it’s exactly right.

“And a coke,” Sherlock continues. “That will be all.”

He closes the menu and hands it to Angelo without looking at him, eyes still fixed on John, who is trying (failing) not to let his admiration show yet again for Sherlock’s uncanny ability.

Angelo chuckles and walks off, whistling ‘Love Is In The Air’. John feels his cheeks heat.

“How did you know?” he asks.

Sherlock merely smirks in a way that manages to be conspiratory rather than superior for once.

John shakes his head and smiles too. “So, Carl Powers then,” he prompts, and Sherlock starts again with his impassioned speech about the local police force and how they continue to obstruct him, and John listens raptly with his chin resting in his palm.

“Did you know him?” Sherlock asks at the end of his rant. “He went to your school. Did he have enemies?”

John makes a so-so gesture with his hand. “I didn’t know him, not really. He was quiet. Shy. I remember he had pretty bad eczema, and that’s about it. As for enemies, do you count bullies?”

Sherlock gives him a meaningful look and John nods at the unspoken question. Moriarty and Moran were the chief tormentors, naturally.

“I count them as _my_ enemies,” Sherlock says after a moment.

The pizza that arrives is hot enough that there’s steam coming off it and John burns his tongue when he tries to eat it too soon. Sherlock’s not making a sound, but John knows he must be laughing at him.

He looks up from the pizza to share the joke, and sees Sherlock isn’t laughing at all – his face is half in shadow, half illuminated by the flickering candlelight, wistful and so very young as he watches John pick up another slice.

“Is it… good?” Sherlock asks a minute later when the plate has stopped steaming and John has taken a few cautious bites. “What’s it like?”

“It’s good,” John says, when he’s fully chewed and swallowed his last mouthful. “It’s… Why don’t you just try some?”

He pushes the plate towards Sherlock who shrinks back in his chair slightly. “No, I-”

“Come on,” John urges, sliding the plate even further across the table. “One slice won’t hurt.”

“John,” Sherlock says, a pleading note in his voice as he eyes the pizza as though it were a bomb.

John is not having any of it. Sherlock _does_ look healthier today, and John wants him to stay that way. “You need to eat, Sherlock.” He turns on his own pleading tone. “For me? I promise it’s delicious, really.”

Sherlock’s eyes are wide and mournful as he picks up the smallest slice on the plate, grimacing when the grease touches his fingers. He raises it to his mouth, takes a delicate nibble of the point and then goes to set it back down. John’s stern expression stops him halfway. Sherlock sighs, takes another two bites and forces a smile. “It’s… nice.”

John allows him to drop the slice the second time and continues eating while Sherlock wipes his fingers and mouth on a napkin, folding his hands in front of himself on the table afterwards, knuckles white with tension. He looks like he’s waiting for something.

“You okay?” John asks.

“Fine,” Sherlock says tightly. “Carry on.”

John doesn’t get through half of another slice before Sherlock closes his eyes in resignation for a second, abruptly stands and then darts out of the restaurant. John knows what that means, he’s seen his sister do it enough times.

“Crap,” he mutters, dropping a crumpled fiver on the table (it’s probably not enough, but it’s all he’s got) and grabbing Sherlock’s coat off of his abandoned chair before going after him.

He finds Sherlock in the alley by the restaurant, coughing a thin stream of yellow bile onto the floor next to the overflowing bins. One of his hands is clenched into a fist and braced hard against the wall and John knows there’s a good graze forming against the brickwork. There’s a puddle at his feet that John refuses to look at. He breathes through his mouth.

 Just as John reaches him (reaches out for him), Sherlock gives a final cough and spit, wipes the back of a trembling hand over his mouth and straightens up.

John is frozen, one hand still extended to rub Sherlock’s back like he does for Harry, like his mum used to do for him.

Sherlock pants for a few seconds, blinking rapidly, the corners of his eyes bright with unshed tears. His mouth twists.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

And that one word is so pitiful that John can’t help himself. He steps up to Sherlock and throws his arms around his friend’s skinny, shaking shoulders and just holds on, squeezing his eyes shut. His blood-warm ear presses against Sherlock’s cold cheek.

Sherlock’s arms don’t come up to return the embrace. “John,” he says, soft and hesitant.

“Yes, Sherlock?” John replies without loosening his grip.

“Do you… like me?”

_Of course_ , John wants to say. _Of course I do_. He tightens his hold. “Of course,” he says. “Of course I do.”

A hand comes up and fists in the back of John’s jumper. “Would you like me better if I was a girl?”

John’s eyes open and he frowns at that. Why is Sherlock even asking? What does he mean? “I don’t know,” he replies honestly. At this point, he’s not sure whether he likes girls better than boys or… or otherwise. He just likes some people more than others. He likes Bill more than Mike and Molly more than Henry and, right now, he likes Sherlock more than anyone.

“Would you still like me if I wasn’t a boy?”

John shrugs. Sherlock must feel it, this close. “I guess.”

Sherlock’s other hand snakes up across John’s back and presses against his shoulder blade. “Good.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


They walk home in silence. Sherlock still has a sickly sheen about him, whatever illusion of health he had possessed earlier is now completely absent, replaced with his usual pallor. He’s silent because he’s gone off somewhere, deep into his own mind. John is quiet because he’s uncertain; he wants to reassure Sherlock, but he’s not sure what he should say that won’t send Sherlock (even more) prickly and unresponsive. He’s also not sure what’s actually happening here – people just don’t get sick after two or three bites of pizza.

He’s got a vague idea of what might be going on, because John remembers one of Harry’s friends, Helen. He remembers her coming round for a sleepover two years ago. He remembers drowsily walking in on her in the bathroom in the middle of the night, and he remembers that two of her fingers were shoved down her throat. There were teethmarks when she pulled them out to hoarsely beg him not to tell anyone.

He hadn’t understood _at all_ what was going on then. He was just embarrassed that he’d walked in on someone in the bathroom, _especially_ a girl.  A couple of years later, and he understands a little more. He understands why Harry stopped eating and started counting instead. He understands the habits and rituals she has with food now.

Sherlock is _awfully_ skinny, John thinks.

He’s timid as he reaches out and takes Sherlock’s hand in his own again. Sherlock flinches, like he’s startled, but he doesn’t pull away.

“All right?” John asks.

“Fine.”

The leather of John’s new glove creaks as Sherlock’s grip tightens.

When they reach the playground, they break apart and regard each other uneasily for a moment.

“It’s all fine,” John blurts out, because it’s been on the tip of his tongue since he found Sherlock in the alley.

Sherlock eyes him coolly. “I know it’s fine.”

The words are like a dismissal, and John feels unaccountably saddened by it. This night has been a disaster, and John has no clue how to fix this (fix _them_ ).

“I ought to go in before mum and Harry get back,” he says, shuffling his feet.

Sherlock nods. John waits, but Sherlock says nothing further.

Maybe he’ll see Sherlock tomorrow and things will be normal again. It doesn’t seem likely, though. As he turns to go inside, John feels the corner of the Morse code book in his inner pocket press against his side.

“Oh!” he says, turning back to Sherlock. “I should give you this.”

He draws the book from his pocket and hands it to Sherlock, bolstered by the look of interest that has appeared on his face.

“Morse code?” Sherlock turns the book over in his hands, his interest turning into a frown. “I already know it.”

“Oh,” John says, because _of course he does._ “Well, brilliant. That’ll save you having to learn it then.”

“Why did you want me to learn it?”

“So we can communicate through the wall,” John stops, unsure. “That _is_ your room on the other side of mine, right? I’ve heard...” _Shouting, arguments._

Sherlock winces. “You can hear me through that wall? No, stupid, _stupid_ , of course you can.”

There are frequent arguments in John’s flat too, so he can’t see why Sherlock might be uncomfortable about it, but he tries to spare him anyway. “No, I mean… I’ve heard you playing the violin,” he says. “You’re really good.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock replies rigidly, as if he’s not used to receiving compliments or praise. John supposes he might not be, he knows that Sherlock’s parents are dead and he doesn’t see his brother much now. And he knows next to nothing about this Mrs Hudson person who Sherlock lives with, he’s never even seen her after that first night. He doesn’t dare ask about her either, not after the shouting matches he’s heard.

“The Morse code is a good idea,” Sherlock continues, handing the book back. “You should probably keep this for reference, seeing as I don’t need it.”

John takes it and flashes a radiant smile at him. “Okay, well, I’ll-” John mimes knocking, and then instantly wants to die, because that was just so _awkward_.

Sherlock smiles back though, his first since Angelo’s, but nothing like the ones from before they went there. With a leaden drop of his stomach, John realises that they’ve actually gone backwards, somehow, in terms of their friendship.

“Sherlock…” he begins.

“You were going in,” Sherlock interrupts before John can decide what it is he wants to say. “I should go too. Come along, John.”

And John follows him, because he can’t do anything else. As he unlocks his door, he looks over to 221B, to Sherlock, and finds he is watching John in return.

Sherlock’s face is neutral, but his eyes are soft when they meet John’s. “Goodnight, John,” he says in a voice that’s hushed, like he’s telling a secret, like it’s much later than nine o’clock at night and he doesn’t want to wake anyone.

Heart pounding and hand sweating where he’s clutching his keys, John impulsively darts across the gap between them and, on his tiptoes, he presses his lips to Sherlock’s cheek – right on that prominent bone. Predictably, it’s cold and smooth. John is quick to pull back and he sees Sherlock’s eyes are closed, his eyebrows are raised, and his mouth is slightly open in surprise.

Sherlock’s eyes stay closed while his hand comes up to touch his face, fingertips resting against the spot John just kissed.

When his eyes open again, John’s face burns under Sherlock’s suddenly intense gaze and unreadable expression. _What have I done?_

“Night, Sherlock,” John mumbles, hurriedly opens his door and ducks inside to escape.

He proceeds then to collapse against the door, throwing an arm across his face. Jesus. What if Sherlock didn’t want to be his friend now? What if he started calling John all the same things as the kids at school did?

With a groan of frustration, John goes to his room and throws himself at the bed. He’s almost too embroiled in his shame and dread to hear the repetitive scraping and tapping on the wall. But not quite.

_Sherlock._

John nearly falls over in his urgency to swipe the Morse code book, a pen, and a pad of paper off his desk, before he returns to sit cross-legged on his bed, facing the wall. His fingers tremble with relief as he takes down the first word from the message: ‘ _John.’_

The scrapes (dashes) and taps (dots) continue, and John discerns the full message after just two repeats: ‘ _John_. _Tomorrow. Playground. Nine. Please.’_

John knocks once and the message stops repeating.

_‘Okay.’_ he spells out, slow and clumsy.

_‘Sleep well.’_ is the swift reply.


	3. Chapter 3

John realises as he walks to school in the morning that nothing had happened yesterday with Moriarty or Moran. Nothing, not a peep. No hitting, no shoving, no name-calling. Not even some casual glaring from them or their followers. In fact, he hadn’t seen _any_ of them at all the previous day.

John goes through the gates that day knowing that he is well and truly _fucked._

He manages to get through his morning lessons without a nervous breakdown, helped by the fact that none of Moriarty’s group are in his form. Breaktime is spent sat on the (closed) loo in a locked stall in the boys’ toilets near the entrance to B block – no one goes there, these particular toilets being the most notoriously unclean in the entire school.

Filthy though it is, he eats his lunch (carefully cut off crusts: he’s taken Harry’s again, _damn it_ ) then and there. This way he’ll be able to spend the whole of lunchtime hiding in the library. Mrs Hardwicke does so hate crumbs.

John swings his legs and chews slowly. There’s no rush to get to science, and the longer he leaves it, the less likely he is to run into anyone in the corridors or stairwells. He looks down at his watch, 11:17. Couple more minutes.

Getting to the library from the L block after science is simple enough, and he has no trouble along the way. Safely ensconced in the warm haven that is the library (maintained even during the summer at a toasty 25°C by Mrs Hardwicke), John breathes a sigh of relief and gets out the Morse code book. He wants to get as much memorised as he can.

His heart speeds up whenever he thinks about seeing Sherlock later, though he’s not sure why. Sherlock tapped out that message even after John embarrassed himself in the hallway, and _Sherlock_ was the one who asked to meet again, so he can’t be angry over the whole kiss thing. Or disgusted.

John still isn’t sure what possessed him to do that. He wanted to dispel the awkwardness that came after Angelo’s, not fuel it. He ponders Sherlock’s message once more. It ended with _please_. He really does want to see John again. Maybe the awkwardness is all on John’s side? He did run off before Sherlock could give him a proper reaction, after all.  John puts himself on the other side of things, but finds he can’t really imagine Sherlock being the one to kiss him. His palms sweat at the idea all the same.

Later, he thinks. Later he’ll find out for sure.

As John continues this avenue of thought, he’s too caught up in his decreasing worry and increasing hope to notice he’s being watched through the window.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

The cut isn’t deep, which only makes it hurt more. The fact that Moriarty is going to take his book hurts most of all.

He’d refused to let Moriarty take it, initially. There were messages to Sherlock tucked between the pages, pre-emptively transcribed in the library. He couldn’t let Moriarty have them. Aside from the time it had taken to do it, he could only imagine what Moriarty would make of them.

He didn’t need to imagine for long, because Moran hit him in the face with a thin tree branch and John fell back into the snow from the force of it, dropping the book as he went.

Moriarty plucks the book from the floor with a dramatic flourish, ignoring the concerns of Jeff Hope, their latest lookout.

“He’s bleeding!” Jeff points at John. “What’s he going to say to his mum?”

Moriarty holds up a hand for silence, “One more word,” he sing-songs, “and I will personally go and tell the Headmaster that it was you who hit poor Johnny here.”

Jeff Hope doesn’t say another word.

A moment later, the laughter begins.

“Oh!” Moriarty giggles, transferring the book to his left hand so he can pretend to wipe away tears with the right. “Oh, this is _too good_.”

John moves to stand, he doesn’t have to listen to this, if he can just- Moran kicks him in he shin. “Stay down,” he orders, grinning at Moriarty in anticipation.

“ _Looking forward to seeing you_ ,” Moriarty says in an exaggerated lisp. “ _I wish you went to my school. I really like you._ ”

John closes his eyes. The blood that escapes from the cut on his cheekbone slides hotly down his face, a counterpoint to the cold wind (the cut itself a parody of the kiss he left on Sherlock’s cheek only last night).

“So your boyfriend doesn’t even go to this school?” Moriarty asks, eyes alight with glee. “That’s the oldest excuse in the book, Johnny, is he even _real_?”

He is real. John thinks of trainers and a Rubik’s cube, leather gloves and messages tapped out on a wall. John opens his eyes, tilts his chin up in defiance, and doesn’t answer.

Moriarty merely smirks, angles his head from side to side in a slow, bizarre oscillation and gestures to Moran and Hope. “Well, I’d best be off now,” he says, as if he had just been to John’s for tea. “Nasty trip you took on the ice there, John, cut your face and everything. I’m sure I’ll be hearing _all_ about that tomorrow, hmm?”

Everyone there knows that John will never tell what really happened.

Moriarty throws the book and papers at John’s feet. “You can have these back. Wouldn’t do for me to be caught with those.”

With a click of his fingers, Moriarty signals to Moran and Hope to fall in, and the three of them walk off and out of view. John is left to collect the notes (now scattered by the wind) and his book, before getting gingerly to his feet to continue walking home.

Thank God it’s Friday.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

John has his head so far down as he walks home that he sees the person-shaped obstacle in front of him only when it’s too late.

“Oh sorry, love, I wasn’t looking where I was going…” a voice starts, and John looks up into the wrinkled face of a woman with kind eyes and greying hair. He recognises her.

“No, no,” he says, holding his hands out as if to calm her. “My fault, I wasn’t looking either.”

“You’re John, aren’t you?” she asks. “You’re Sherlock’s young man. I’m Mrs Hudson, I- well, I suppose you could say I look after him. He’s told me all about you.”

John knows his face must be flooding with colour at her particular choice of phrasing. Sherlock’s young man, indeed. “Um, I- No, I’m just-”

“It’s nice,” she continues, “to see Sherlock so happy like this. He doesn’t have too many friends.”

John wants to keep us his denial, but he gets stuck on something she just said. “I make Sherlock happy?”

“Of course you do, dear! You should see him when he’s really bad, feet up on the furniture, not talking for days on end and then only to correct you or be rude to you, and the _mess_ he makes, with his experiments and…”

“Right, okay,” John cuts her off, realising she probably doesn’t get an outlet for her Sherlock-induced rage often, “I think I get it.”

“Yes, well, I do know _why_ he runs all those experiments-” Mrs Hudson cuts herself off as though she’s said too much and fidgets anxiously with the strap of her handbag. “I suppose I can’t stand here chatting with you all day, taking up your time. And I have to be going myself.”

Remembering to be polite, John holds out his hand. “It was lovely meeting you,” he says.

Mrs Hudson gives him a sly look. “I’m not Sherlock’s mother, you know, you boys don’t need my blessing. But I appreciate your manners. Not many boys your age have them.”

Just when the extra blood had about left his face, John feels it all rush back up. “No- no, you don’t understa-”

Mrs Hudson waves off his stammering. “Be kind to him, John, that’s all I ask.”

And with that, she walks away, leaving John to press his wind-cold hands to his burning face and laugh.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

John finds his mother crying at the kitchen table when he gets in. The rest of the flat is completely silent, so Harry must be at Clara’s.

“Mum?” he whispers, dropping his school bag at the door and hesitantly approaching her.

Her hands drop away from her face instantly, and it’s a twisted mask of grief – mascara and eyeliner smudged in spidery lines around both glistening, bloodshot eyes.

With a jolt that feels like Moran’s fist to his stomach, John realises that he can’t _actually_ remember Harry saying anything about going to Clara’s tonight.

“What’s happened?” he asks urgently.

Her face twists further. “It’s Alan, John… He’s- we won’t be seeing him again.”

_Thank God for that, finally._

“Oh mum,” he says, going to the other chair and dragging it close enough that he can put his arms around her. “It’s okay, you don’t need F—” John clears his throat. “—Alan.”

She returns his embrace weakly, and John hates himself for being so selfish, so glad about all this. She leans back a moment later and grimaces at him. “What happened to your face?”

There’s a certain irony to that considering the state of hers. John wipes at the remnants of her (painstakingly applied just this morning) makeup and smiles.

“Fell on some ice,” he says, shrugging.

She licks her thumb and wipes away some of the blood. “You need to be more careful, baby.”

John squirms away from her hand and laughs. “Mum, I’m not six anymore!”

“I know,” she says, a proud tinge to the words, “you’re a little man. The man of the house.”

It’s been a while since she’s called him that. But then, it’s been a while since they’ve talked even this much.

“I’m going to do dinner,” she announces brightly. “It’s just you and me tonight, Johnny.”

So, Harry _is_ at Clara’s.

John looks at his watch and sees it’s quarter past four. Just under five hours until he’s meant to meet Sherlock. He watches his mother pour a large glass of wine before taking out anything else to prepare dinner.

He’ll be free to meet Sherlock by nine, no problem.

“I’m going to go get changed.”

“All right, love.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

John throws a blanket over his mother before he leaves at five to nine, tucking her left leg back up onto the sofa from where it’s dangling over the side. He throws her quarter-full glass of wine down the sink, washes the glass, dries it, and puts it back in the cupboard.

Outside in the playground, there’s no sign of Sherlock. John sits on the bottom ledge of the climbing frame and takes off his gloves to scratch idly at the plaster on his cheek.

“How did you get that?”

John looks up at Sherlock’s question. Sherlock is standing directly in front of him, eyebrows close together in a frown. He’s foregone his coat, and the sleeves of his blue shirt are rolled up to the elbows. In the dim light cast by the lamppost, John notices again that there are no goosepimples on Sherlock’s skin in the frosty night air.

“What, this?” John taps his cheek. “Can’t you tell just by looking?”

Sherlock nods. “But I’d rather you told me. People… people prefer that, don’t they?”

He’s nervous, John realises. Sherlock doesn’t have many tells – he’s too controlled in his movements for that, but he’s maintaining a careful distance between them today, where previously he had little regard for personal space after just their first meeting.

John pats the space next to him on the ledge, dusts some of the snow off. Sherlock takes the invitation at once, coming to sit right beside him, close enough that they’re pressed together from shoulder to knee.

“I suppose,” John says, “but I don’t mind when you, you know, do your thing. I think it’s amazing.”

Sherlock smiles and his hand (the one not currently squashed against John’s) comes up and turns John’s face toward him, curious fingers brushing over the plaster. “The bullies,” he murmurs, dropping his arm.

John’s eyes flutter open. When had he closed them? Sherlock’s mouth is a grim, tight line, his eyes are hard and unforgiving and John feels almost afraid of him for a moment before he remembers: this is _Sherlock._

“I’ll kill them all,” Sherlock says fiercely and his fingers skate over the plaster again, and then _again_ as if he can’t stop touching it. There’s a fleeting cold sensation each time his fingers cross the boundary between plaster and skin.

John laughs, because he has similar thoughts of vengeance every day. He carries his dad’s pocket knife, for God’s sake. “Yeah, me too, I’ll help.”

“I’m serious, John,” Sherlock stops touching him and turns his head away. “You need to fight back.”

“How?” John scoffs. “I’m weak and there’s usually three of them, if not more.”

Sherlock turns back to catch and hold John’s gaze again. “Then you need to hit back harder. Hit back harder than you dare, John. Then they’ll leave you alone.”

John opens his mouth to protest and then closes it. He nods slowly. “You’re right.”

He goes to pull the plaster off (it’s itching even more now Sherlock’s been messing about with it), but Sherlock’s hand shoots up and grips his wrist, hard. John barely saw him move. He looks at Sherlock questioningly, but finds Sherlock’s eyes heavy-lidded and downcast.

“Don’t,” Sherlock says warningly.

John’s wrist is starting to hurt, and for the second time that evening he’s almost afraid of Sherlock. “All right,” John says, soft like he’s trying to soothe a scared animal because he’s realised that Sherlock isn’t scary right now, he’s _scared._ “Okay, I won’t.”

Sherlock releases John’s forearm as abruptly as he took it and John’s hand replaces his, rubbing the tender skin of his wrist and covering the red marks Sherlock’s fingers have left. That’s going to bruise in the morning.

“Jesus, Sherlock,” he says. “You can’t go around doing that. You’re stronger than you look.”

Shoulders hunched in a cringe, Sherlock looks down at his own hands and avoids John’s eyes. He jumps off the climbing frame, looking ready to run.

John sighs in exasperation. “No, don’t run off!”

Sherlock turns back to him. “You’re not angry?”

“Well, yeah, I kind of am. But you don’t need to go.”

Sherlock looks up to the blocked out windows of 221B and John follows his gaze. There’s a faint yellow light escaping through the gap between two of the bits of cardboard.

“I should go, anyway,” Sherlock says. “I shouldn’t have come out here tonight.”

Disappointment trickles, icy and unwanted, through John’s stomach. “Oh, okay.”

Sherlock gives him a plaintive look, and John remembers contemplating the loneliness in his face the second time they met. It’s even worse now, and John’s heart gives a painful, stuttering squeeze at the sight.

“John.” Apparently, Sherlock just said his name for the sake of saying it, as he doesn’t say anything else, but suddenly crowds into John’s space and lays a brief kiss on the plaster beneath his eye.

John does a good impression of a fish out of water. Is this how they say goodbye now? Sherlock moves to pull away and John catches his hand, weaving their fingers together the way he’s seen Henry and Molly do.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asks.

“Tomorrow evening,” Sherlock agrees. “Nine o’clock.”

He squeezes John’s hand before he walks away.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

John waits for Sherlock for an hour and a half. (John has waited the entire Saturday.)

Sherlock never arrives.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

The hospital corridors are empty at this time of night, save for one whistling cleaner who Sherlock encounters on his way to the Intensive Treatment Unit.

She’s in a private side-room, Mycroft had said. No one will be coming in for the next hour, Mycroft had said. The body will be taken care of and there will be no repercussions, Mycroft had said.

Sherlock wanders past the nurse’s station unimpeded. Visiting hours are long since over, but the staff have all been spoken to. Sherlock doesn’t spare a thought for what might have been said, or the amount of bribery and threatening that was involved.

The nurses whisper after he goes by.

“Is he barefoot?”

“That poor child…”

“She worked in the blood bank, you know. Just because we work in the hospital, we always think we’re immune…”

He doesn’t ask for their help in locating Mrs Hudson.

He finds her in the end by following his nose – he’d know that perfume anywhere.

She looks like she’s sleeping when he opens the door and shuts it behind himself again, and he half expects her eyes to open at the soft _click_ noise it makes. She always was a light sleeper.

But then, the fact that he can painlessly step over the threshold into her room tells him she won’t be opening her eyes again. She’s gone.

He only spoke to her this morning, mere hours ago. Human health is so fragile, so changeable. He has to admit it to himself: he never expected this to be her end.

Sherlock stands at the foot of the bed and flips through her medical notes and drug chart, keeping an eye on the monitors over her head. The notes say the same as Mycroft did: ruptured aneurysm, imaging confirms subarachnoid haemorrhage, Glasgow Coma Score of 3/15 since admission, no response to stimuli, EEG confirms electrocerebral inactivity.

It all adds up to the conclusion he’s already come to: brain death.

Though he’s never felt less like it in his life, he has to smile at the blood type when he spies it in the notes. O negative – universal donor. How typical of her.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

John wakes gradually at the sound of his window sliding open. He’s been lying on his front, so he’s just moving to roll over to see what’s going on when there is a short, low command: “Don’t.”

“Bloody hell, Sherlock,” John says, relaxing into the bed again, words muffled by the pillow his face is still crushed against. “Is that you?”

“Of course it- no, I said _don’t_ turn around!”

John stops moving, now lying on his left side. He can see the digital display of his alarm clock in this position and it is too late for this kind of weirdness. “What’s going on?”

Silence. Then Sherlock speaks so quietly that John almost doesn’t hear him. “May I come in?”

John yawns, mouth opening wide enough that his jaw cracks, and waves a hand. He makes a vague mumble of agreement.

“You have to say it, John.” Sherlock sounds insistent.

“Fine, fine, you can come in.”

There’s a thud followed by another, presumably Sherlock hopping inside and then closing the window behind him, as the street noise from outside stops afterwards.

“Don’t turn around, John,” Sherlock repeats.

John waves his hand again in lieu of a proper answer.

Sherlock gives a discreet laugh, and then John hears a series of noises that go with undressing – the light pops of buttons being undone, the harsh buzz of a zip, and the gentle rustling of clothes being dropped on the floor.

John listens to Sherlock’s muted footsteps, feels a shifting of the covers and a dip in the mattress, and then a cold, wet foot brushes over his, making him tense up.

“God, you’re freezing,” he grumbles. “ _I’m_ freezing after waiting outside for you earlier.”

“I didn’t mean to leave you waiting,” Sherlock whispers back, but he doesn’t apologise or offer an explanation for his absence.

John sighs. “How did you get in?”

“I flew.”

“Sure.” John snorts.

An arm hesitantly drapes itself across John’s chest. “Is this okay?” Sherlock asks in a whisper, and John feels him nudge closer, body aligning itself along John’s.

John, who sleeps in just his pants, doesn’t feel any material against his back, just ice-cold skin.

“I guess, but...” John looks down at the pale arm that’s looped around him, exposed up to the shoulder where his line of vision ends. “Sherlock, are you naked?”

“Yes.” A pause. “Not good?”

“Bit not good, yeah.”

“Oh.”

The arm around him slackens and he feels Sherlock start to pull away, so he brings his own arm up to cover Sherlock’s and laces their fingers together. “It’s fine,” he says.

Sherlock presses close once more and they both just breathe quietly in the dark for a long moment.

“Sherlock?” John asks eventually, knowing Sherlock can’t have gone to sleep yet from the tension that’s still radiating off of him.

“Yes?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Hmm? No, girlfriends not really my area.”

John feels a flutter in his chest, right underneath where their joined hands are resting. “Oh right. Do you have a boyfriend, then?”

“No.”

That same little hopeful flutter. “Will you- would you want to be my boyfriend?”

“John…”

John shuts his eyes tight, because he recognises that tone. It always comes before a ‘no’. He braces himself for the rejection.

“I’m not a boy, John.”

With an irritated huff, John edges away from Sherlock. “What are you on about? If you don’t want to be my boyfriend, that’s fine. You don’t have to make things up.”

“What would be the point?” Sherlock asks. “What’s wrong with things as they are?”

“I don’t know,” John answers, and then he frowns, because he’s never thought of it that way. There’s nothing wrong with things as they are, but Sherlock _is_ different to everyone else he knows. He’s never liked anyone the way he likes Sherlock.

“Would anything have to change if I was your boyfriend?” Sherlock asks. “Would I have to do anything special?”

John thinks about it. They spend time together, they hold hands, and they’ve exchanged a hug and a couple of kisses on the cheek. No different to Henry and Molly. Nothing special, or extra. “No,” he answers, with some measure of assurance.

“So everything would be the same,” Sherlock presses, tugging John close again with a hand that’s warming up from where it’s been laid over John’s heart.

“Yeah.”

A breath along the back of John’s neck, a beat of silence, then- “All right, I’ll be yours.”

John smiles at the words, a rosebud of happiness bursting into bloom in his chest, vines from it shooting all through his body, right down to his toes. “Good.”

As he drifts off to sleep, he feels Sherlock’s hand come up to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. He misses Sherlock’s fingertips tracing whisper-soft across his bare shoulder before tenderly skimming all the way down his arm to interlock their fingers again.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

In the morning, John wakes up alone to the sounds of Harry loudly making breakfast, slamming cupboards in the kitchen and shouting at their mother about an absence of teabags.

It’s cold in his bedroom, John realises, because the window is just slightly open.

 _Bloody Sherlock,_ he thinks, mystified as to how he got in or out.

When John gets out of bed to shut the window, he sees a bit of paper on the desk below it. It’s a small piece torn out of John’s sketch pad, with several lines of slanted, haphazard writing on it.

 

_John -_

_I must be gone and live,_

_or stay and die,_

_but do believe that I am_

_(and shall remain)_

_very sincerely yours._

_\- Sherlock Holmes_

 

 _Yours._ That word still makes him indescribably happy.

To save himself worrying about the meaning of the first two lines, John instead ponders why they are so familiar.

He only understands when he picks up the note to see if there is anything on the back and discovers that the note had been lying on top of his battered (and now even more well-thumbed) copy of _Romeo and Juliet_.

There _is_ something on the back of the paper – several bars of musical notes and rests and sharps and flats on drawn staves that are just slightly wobbly.

John’s experience as a grade one clarinettist is of no use to him in this instance. He can’t read the music, much less play it.

His knock on the wall gets no reply.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

Bored and restless, John’s Sunday passes slowly after that.

A phone call from his dad puts his mother into such a state that she takes a couple of sleeping pills with a large glass of wine at eleven in the morning, retreats to her bedroom, and John doesn’t see her for the rest of the day.

Harry is out with friends, as usual.

John ends up sleeping for a few more hours himself. He finishes his homework, after which he sits outside in the park in the first proper sunshine he’s seen for days, watching the snow recede and hoping Sherlock will turn up.

He doesn’t.

When it starts to get dark, John goes in to make dinner and eats it alone in his room.

An hour later, the violin starts, and something in John relaxes. It’s like coming up for air after being underwater.

Sherlock is still here. He hasn’t gone anywhere.

The piece of music Sherlock is playing isn’t one John recognises, but then he’s always been hopeless with classical music. Like the first time John heard him, Sherlock plays in fits and starts, often with frustrated mumbling in between that John can’t make out.

There’s nothing wrong with Sherlock’s ability to play the piece, John can tell, so why does he keep stopping and starting?

His mind goes back to the note Sherlock had left and the hastily scribbled music on the back of it. He hears Sherlock snarl and then stop playing _again_.

Could it be a composition?

It’s a simple piece, from what John has heard, built around a sequence of four, lamenting notes. It’s not like the complicated Bach he’s heard, it’s not like anything else he’s heard Sherlock play, so a composition seems likely. Sherlock begins anew, playing for longer this time as if he might actually _finish_ the piece. The melody strikes John as terribly sad, almost unbearably so.

He lays his hand against the wall as he listens, heart aching for the boy on the other side.

There are tears in John’s eyes when Sherlock does complete the melody with a final, mournful note. It _is_ a simple piece, but it is stunning in its beauty.

He has to tap and scrape a message out. They’ve developed a decent system with the Morse code already, saving decoding of unnecessary words.

_Bravo._

_For you,_ Sherlock replies, and John’s heart fairly hammers against his ribs.

 _Meet,_ John sends back, knowing Sherlock will read it as the question it is.

_Case. Thinking. Tomorrow._

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

On Monday morning, as he goes into school, John actually feels something like confidence stirring somewhere around his chest. Sherlock has agreed to be his, it doesn’t matter what any of these people here do or say. Sherlock is the smartest, most interesting person he has ever met. His classmates and their opinions don’t even register compared to the value of his regard.

So when Moriarty, Moran and Hope corner him after fifth period PE, he refuses to cower. _Hit back harder than you dare,_ Sherlock’s voice says in his mind.

John is so, so tired of being a victim.

Moriarty’s agonised cry brings Mr Wiltshire running into the sports equipment cupboard. John drops the hockey stick, breath hitching and stuttering as his heart races, wild and exultant.

There’s blood coming from Moriarty’s ear and he’s _still_ screaming, a hand clasped over it to stem the flow.

Moran has run for the Headmaster, Hope has just run out of cowardice.

“He hit me!” Moriarty shouts, has already shouted this same statement five times, as though he can’t quite believe it.

John couldn’t move to run away after doing it and he remains frozen on the spot as Mr Wiltshire tries to get a look at the wound. He’s breathing more steadily now and just taking in Moriarty’s screams and pained writhing on the floor.

John isn’t the victim this time.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

The dressing down he gets from the Headmaster is nothing compared to the one he gets from his mother.

John takes it like a man, standing with his head down before her, left hand rhythmically clenching and unclenching by his side. It’s a familiar gesture under stress, the movement of his thumb over his index finger oddly soothing to him.

He gets a break when she calls his father to screech at him instead though, and he takes advantage of the opportunity to sneak off to his room.

“Do you know what our son has done today? He’s only gone and attacked some kid, nearly took his fucking ear off. I suppose this is your-”

John tunes her out, years of practice kicking in. He passes Harry on the way to his room where she’s listening none too surreptitiously in her bedroom doorway.

“Nice one, John,” she says, the smirk audible in her tone. “How long’s the suspension?”

“A week,” he grimaces and shrugs. “Could be worse.”

“Please,” Harry snorts. “I’d give my right arm to be you; you’ll have the place to yourself for a whole week, you jammy sod.”

John sticks his tongue out at her and goes into his room to wait. His mum is particularly jittery tonight _and_ she’s talked to dad, so it won’t be long before she has a few drinks and passes out on the sofa.

He can barely wait to tell Sherlock what he’s done.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

“You’re not the only one who ‘knows places’,” John says with a grin, leading Sherlock by the hand into the basement of Baker Street Court. “No one comes down here now. Harry’s friend’s brother showed it to me last year before he went away to uni. He was cool.”

Sherlock takes the lead to glance around the room, looking at the posters of bands on the walls, the damp creeping down from the ceiling. He looks from the boiler to the CD player, from the threadbare sofa to the mop in the corner. “I see. You’ve brought me to a maintenance room, John.”

His tone may be mocking, but it’s playful too, John can tell. “Stop your whining, posh boy.”

Affronted, Sherlock turns his head to look at John and opens his mouth to argue.

“You’re wearing a suit,” John points out. “Say nothing.”

Sherlock quirks an eyebrow and laughs. He turns fully and takes hold of John’s other hand, leans close to touch his cool lips to John’s cheek. He lingers for a whole five seconds. “I forgot to say hello, outside,” he explains as he pulls back. “Forgive my lack of manners.”

John knows he’s blushing as he returns the kiss low on Sherlock’s cheek, mere centimetres from his mouth. He’s braver after fighting back against Moriarty, but he’s not feeling _that_ brave.

“I did it, Sherlock. I hit Moriarty today.”

Sherlock smiles and squeezes both of John’s hands. “Well done, courage suits you. We’ll make a soldier of you yet.”

Amazing. John shakes his head, he’s never going to get over the way Sherlock can do that. “How did you know I want to join the army?”

“The same way I know you also want to be a doctor – highly contradictory there, John.” He raises their linked hands to examine and seemingly to just _play_ with the fingers of John’s left hand, a look of wonder on his face. “I know you better than you know yourself,” he murmurs, “but you can still surprise me.”

John is somewhat spellbound, caught up in being the subject of Sherlock’s undivided attention.

The mop in the corner falls down with a clatter, and just like that the intensity in Sherlock’s gaze is gone. He smiles again, and it’s an even better thing to see on his face. “So what did you want to do here?” he asks, stepping back to gesture to the room.

With that step back, John feels like he has room to breathe again, and he does so shakily. “In my room,” he says, “and in that note you left, you said you were mine. I wanted to show you that- that I’m yours too.”

John isn’t quite so good with words, so he hopes a blood oath will be sufficient.

In a quick movement, John pulls his knife out of his pocket and makes a small diagonal cut across his palm. He lets out a gasp of pain and, in his peripheral vision, he sees Sherlock stiffen and withdraw from their shared space.

Holding out his open palm, he looks up and finds Sherlock several feet away, his back pressed right against the opposite wall. Sherlock’s hands are clenched and his eyes are squeezed shut. He’s breathing hard and fast, his chest heaving with effort. “No,” he moans. “No, no, no, no…”

“Oh.” John closes his hand with a wince, but the blood escapes around his fingers and drips onto the floor. “I didn’t think, what with the detective bit and all. Do you-” he falters, because Sherlock looks _so_ distressed, like nothing John has ever seen before. “Do you have a problem with the sight of blood?”

Sherlock makes an odd, growling noise and doesn’t answer. He drops to the ground and crawls swiftly across it, still panting as though he’s run a marathon.

“Sherlock?”

John watches with growing revulsion as Sherlock reaches him on his knees, bends his head, and _licks_ John’s blood off the floor.

There are hungry, wet, revolting sounds coming from Sherlock as he continues to lap at the blood.

“Sher-”

Sherlock’s head whips up before John can finish stammering out his name. There is blood on his chin and his pupils are so dilated that the iris is invisible. His face looks wrong and twisted and frightening, no longer delicate or beautiful or lonely. He looks feral, and the effect only worsens as he contorts his face and yells: “Go!”

John flinches, but he can’t move his feet. He’s overwhelmed, paralysed by fear and shock.

“Leave!” Sherlock bangs a fist against the floor. “Now, John!”

The use of his name startles him, and it gets John hurrying to escape. He almost trips over his own feet as he stumbles out of the room backwards, eyes still on Sherlock.

The last thing he sees as he leaves is Sherlock, still on the floor, curling in on himself and putting his hands on either side of his head, pressing inwards as though his head were about to split apart.

John runs down the corridor and opens the door to the stairwell. Before the door can swing shut behind him, a scream of pure anguish from the maintenance room brings him to his knees, where he can only wrap his arms around himself in a weak imitation of comfort and cry uncontrollably for a length of time that he will never be able to recall afterward.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

At home, John sits numbly at his desk and googles ‘vampires’ for three hours, until his eyes are stinging and blurring, until his elbow is red raw where he’s been propping up his chin.

Some descriptions fit perfectly; some things perfectly explain everything John has overlooked.

John is angry with Sherlock, but he’s angrier with himself. He has ignored so many weird things about Sherlock because he was so desperate to have a friend, so desperate to have someone who cared about him.

_“I’m not a boy, John.”_

He should have known. He should have _known_ it was too good to be true. Why would anyone be interested in him without an ulterior motive?

The front door of 221B slams at around midnight, and the sounds of heavy thuds against the walls begin. Glass smashes, pottery shatters, wood splinters.

Everything is breaking apart.

John lies awake for a long time, just listening.

He doesn’t cry.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


 

Sherlock lies on the floor of the maintenance room for hours after John leaves.

He feels numb, but he’s the exact _opposite_ of numb – he’s hungry ( _always_ hungry), he’s tired, he’s angry, he’s sad, he’s lonely.

He feels so many things and he can’t make any of it stop.

John made it stop, a little.

But now John knows. John has seen him like this.

John looked at him, he saw the disgusting thing that Sherlock is and he fled with pure horror.

Sherlock puts his hands over his temples and squeezes again, but it doesn’t help.

What is he supposed to do now? How can he ever fix this?

He’s the one that needs to be fixed.

He needs Mycroft, God help him.

He needs to leave John.


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning, John wakes to find his mother sat at the end of his bed. He rubs his eyes and sits up. He must have finally dozed off at some point, but it’s the first day of his suspension, so his lack of sleep hardly matters.

“I have to take Harry to school and go to work now, John,” his mother says, taking down her ponytail and re-tying it with an expression of dissatisfaction.

John says nothing. Next door, all is silent.

“Remember the rules for when you’re here on your own,” she continues. “Don’t go out, and if anyone knocks at the door, don’t answer.”

She stands up, straightening her Sainsbury’s polo shirt and grumbling about ‘bloody social workers’, and then she leaves without saying goodbye.

John looks at his alarm clock, 07:35. He rolls onto his front, presses his face against the pillow with a low groan and wills himself to go back to sleep.

There is nothing else for him to do today.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock plays his composition. He scrawls words under the gap he’s left for a title he hasn’t thought of yet: _malincolico, patetico_ (melancholic, with great emotion).

He hears John get out of bed with a sigh.

 

* * *

 

The door to 221B opens instantly when John knocks just once, cutting off the Morse code ‘ _talk to me’_ he had been about to tap and scrape.

Sherlock stands there motionless, holding the door and looking more uncertain than John has ever seen him. He won’t meet John’s eyes. Neither of them speaks for a moment.

“I heard you breathing next door,” Sherlock says eventually. “I knew you were home.”

John adds ‘hearing’ to the plus side on his mental list of Sherlock’s suspected vampiric strengths and weaknesses. He adds ‘listens to me breathing’ to the list of things about Sherlock that creep him out.

“I was excluded,” John explains, “for hitting Moriarty.”

Sherlock nods, eyes still downcast.

John dips his head down to catch Sherlock’s gaze, then raises his head again with Sherlock following and reluctantly making eye contact. “May I come in?” John’s voice only shakes a little as he asks.

“Of course.” Sherlock steps back to pull the door wide open.

There’s a small tendril of dread poking icily at his stomach as John walks in and Sherlock closes the door behind them. He’s trapped here with a vampire, oh God, how stupid can you get?

Sherlock walks past him then, a pained, bitter smile on his face. “I’m not going to hurt you, John.”

He goes through the inner door to the flat and, watching John through the pane of glass, closes it so that John cannot follow.

“Maybe you’ll feel safer this way,” he says forlornly, tracing a finger over the patterns in the glass.

John goes up to the door and lays his left hand against the window. “Can you read minds?” he asks, hurt that Sherlock felt the need to put a barrier between them and shut him out. He’s not _that_ afraid of him. Not really, not now.

Sherlock splays his right hand over the glass, over John’s. Their hands don’t match through the window – John has broader palms and Sherlock has longer fingers. 

“No,” Sherlock says, “but I can read faces. And I can hear when your heart rate increases in fear.”

Another one for the list. “Are you a vampire?”

Sherlock looks down and moves his hand.

 _Don’t lie to me, please,_ John thinks. He moves his hand to meet Sherlock’s again, pressing their fingertips together. 

The glass isn’t as cold as he knows Sherlock’s skin to be.

“I need blood to live, yes.”

John lets that sink in. “So are you… are you dead? Undead? How old are you, really?”

The lightbulb above them flickers and Sherlock’s fingers tap out a short rhythm on the glass as he thinks about his answer. John copies the rhythm, softer, quieter.

“I’m conscious,” Sherlock says with a small shrug of one shoulder. “I move, respire, react to my environment… I miss a few of the basic life processes, but I think I qualify as ‘alive’. And I’m thirteen, like I told you.” A rueful smile, and his hand drops to his side. “But I have been thirteen for longer than is naturally possible.”

The door opens with a creak and Sherlock beckons John into the rest of the flat.

Artificial light is the only source of luminance in the place. All of the windows are completely blocked out with wood and cardboard. The first room they enter is obviously meant to be the sitting room, although it’s hard to tell from the distinct lack of furniture. Whatever havoc Sherlock wreaked last night, it has been cleared away since. There are a few boxes piled up in the corners, not yet unpacked. The carpet is a dull, faded green colour and borders (dull, faded) cream linoleum as the sitting room runs into the kitchen. Said kitchen is clean and looks like it has barely been used. A large fridge is the focus of the room, and John wonders what might be in it, shuddering at the images of dismembered body parts that come to mind.

John and Sherlock stand awkwardly near the doorway and listen to the fridge hum. Sherlock’s stomach rumbles in the near-silence.

“The blood, do you…” John breaks off, unable to say it.

“I don’t drink from living people now,” Sherlock answers his question anyway. “Mrs Hudson was taking donated blood from the hospital to sustain me,” his eyelashes flutter as he looks down and away, “but she’s not here anymore.”

“Who is she?”

“She was my nanny, from before. Mine and Mycroft’s, until I… changed, and then Mycroft had her sacked to stop her finding out my secret. After what happened to my last guardian though, she came back onto Mycroft’s radar and he thought her job and our history made her an appropriate successor.”

“Mycroft’s your older brother, right? Is he like you?”

“No. He’s nearly forty now. We used to be only seven years apart. And I thought that was a big age gap.” Sherlock laughs mirthlessly.

“Did you use to?”

Sherlock frowns. “Did I use to what?”

“Drink blood from living people? You said you don’t _now._ What about before?”

Sherlock’s eyes go to the mantelpiece and alight on the skull that sits on top of it. John’s eyes follow, and he flinches when he sees the skull.

“An old friend,” Sherlock says, nodding at the mantelpiece. “That’s Victor. He used to procure blood for me before Mrs Hudson. Through more… morally dubious means.”

“Jesus, what happened to him?”

“He got caught,” Sherlock says dispassionately, “but he did have the best taste in coats. I assume you’ve noticed mine is too big for me.”

“You kept his _coat_?”

“He left it to me.”

“What about his skull?”

“A keepsake. A memento, a reminder,” Sherlock lists the words angrily, raging at himself. “It’s sentiment, isn’t that right?”

John points at the skull, wide-eyed in disbelief. “No, Sherlock, _that_ is not sentiment.”

Sherlock ignores him, mumbling to himself. “I don’t have anything of Mrs Hudson’s, not even her brooch. The hospital must have that, somewhere. Perhaps I can ask Mycroft... And I suppose you’re going to leave me now, too.”

“What?”

Sherlock looks up at John’s face. “You,” Sherlock says. “You’re going to leave me… no, I’ll have to leave you. Yes, of course, I’ll have to move on, like I always do.”

He’s talking to himself again.  John crosses his arms, holds onto himself tightly to keep from falling apart.

“I can’t-” he starts and then stops, shaking his head. “I can’t deal with this right now, Sherlock, I want to go home.”

Sherlock, who is standing between John and the door, doesn’t move.

“I want to go home,” John repeats, moving into Sherlock’s personal space and drawing himself up to his full height, still a few inches shorter than Sherlock. “If you’ll let me.”

Sherlock instantly begins to move out of John’s way, but John still pushes past him in his haste to escape.

“I was right,” Sherlock says behind him, quiet and subdued. “I’m always right.”

John is nearly at the front door, but he has to turn and ask before he leaves, he has to. “What about?”

“I told you we couldn’t be friends.”

 

* * *

 

Sherlock’s parting words follow John around for the rest of the day. He skips lunch and only picks at his food in the evening, listless and distracted.

“What’s eating you?” Harry asks from across the table.

John wants to laugh for the first time that day, and so he does.

Harry rolls her eyes, calls him a freak, and resumes her meal.

 

* * *

 

The knock comes after dark the next day. It’s not altogether unexpected, but it is later in the day than John had thought it would be. When he thinks about it as he goes to get the door though, he remembers that his flat isn’t sun-proof like Sherlock’s, so it makes sense for him to come later. So many things make sense now.

Luckily, it’s a night John has to himself – his mum works a late shift in the petrol station on a Tuesday and Harry goes to kick-boxing and then stays at Clara’s. Considering how much Sherlock can deduce about people from what seems to be very insignificant evidence, John wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Sherlock was aware of these family quirks when he planned the visit.

John opens the door warily, and finds a bedraggled-looking Sherlock on the threshold. The deep blue of Sherlock’s shirt is a marked contrast to the lack of colour in his face, framed by lank, untamed curls. His skin is wan and seems almost translucent under the stark strip-lighting of the corridor.

“May I come in?” he asks.

Jaw set, John grips the door handle in his clammy fist and opens the door wider in invitation.

“You have to say it, John.” 

“What if I don’t?” John asks him. “Is there a barrier you can’t cross?” He pokes the air in front of himself.

“Please, just say it.” Sherlock sounds tired and strained. _Good_ , John thinks, _so I’m not the only one_.

“No, I want to know: what happens? Tell me. I’m fed up with your secrets and your mysteries, Sherlock.”

“You want to know?” Sherlock is getting angry now, John can tell. His pale lips have thinned and his eyes are bright and sharp.

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

John pulls the door fully open as a challenge. Sherlock strides in with his head held high, passes John in the entrance and turns to face him. He stands still, like he’s waiting for something.

“What?” John asks.

“You wanted to know, and I’m showing you.”

So John watches. As he does, some of the righteous anger seems to leave Sherlock and he begins to just look sad again, from the vulnerable hunch of his shoulders to his limp hands at his sides. His eyes are still bright, but they’re soft around the edges now.

“Invite me in, John,” he pleads.

“I want to know what happens,” John says, but he’s less firm than before in the face of Sherlock’s dismay.

There’s something martyr-like in Sherlock’s expression as he stands there, just waiting. John holds his breath without realising it.

The blood comes from his scalp first.

Sherlock manages not to wince as the cut opens on the back of his head, out of John’s line of sight, and the blood runs down through his hair, down the nape of his neck, down under the collar of his shirt. 

It’s beginning.

“Please, John,” Sherlock whispers.

John wants to give in at that, but he’s curious, and he’s still angry, he’s still hurt because he’s been lied to. He still wants to know if there was anything real about their friendship, and he’s starting to think that this is possibly the most real he has seen Sherlock in all their time together. So he says nothing and folds his arms, drawing no comfort from the gesture.

The blood comes from Sherlock’s nose next.

“Sherlock, you-”

Sherlock shakes his head, and a bloody tear leaks out of his right eye. A matching trail escapes his left eye a moment later.

Blood drips out of his ears, down his forehead, sliding wet and hot along his cheeks and jaw.

Several cuts form on his chest and his shirt is soon soaked with blood.

John can only watch with mounting panic.

Sherlock opens his mouth to speak and scarlet dribbles from his lips instead of words, and it’s this that breaks John out of his horrified fugue state.

“Stop,” he cries, reaching out to take Sherlock’s shoulders in his hands. They’re moist and slippery with blood as he gives him a small shake. “Stop!”

Sherlock tries to speak again and more blood comes out. His forehead slices open and John realises with a jolt what Sherlock is trying to say, what _he_ needs to say.

“You can come in,” he gasps out in desperation. “I invite you in, Sherlock. Please- you can come in! _Stop._ ”

And it does stop then. The cuts close immediately, and Sherlock sags under John’s hands. The trails of blood remain, a grotesque reminder of what has just happened, Sherlock’s alabaster skin streaked and stained with crimson.

John sighs out his relief and uses his grip on Sherlock’s shoulders to gather him close to his chest in an embrace. His heart races, and he’s trembling just as much as Sherlock is in his arms.

“Why did you come in?” he asks, tightening his hold as Sherlock falters and falls against him, feeble as a kitten.

“I knew you wouldn’t let it go too far,” Sherlock mumbles the reply, voice thready and hushed. “I know you, John, you’re too good to let me die.”

John hides his face in Sherlock’s neck when tears blur his vision.

“What _was_ that?” he asks. “Why did it happen?”

Sherlock clenches a hand in the back of John’s jumper to stop it from shaking. “I don’t know, I just… don’t know.”

They cling together like that for too long, standing in a pool of Sherlock’s blood in John’s hallway.

 

* * *

 

In the shower, the white shampoo lather turns rust-coloured as Sherlock washes his matted, sticky hair. He moves under the scalding spray with his eyes shut and doesn’t look down at the blood as it washes away down the drain.

He uses John’s shower gel and smiles at the familiar scent of lime that lingers after he gets out of the shower, wrapping himself in a large, white towel. He sniffs his own arm, pleased to find he smells like John.

His smile sours when he remembers he won’t stay smelling pleasant for long if he doesn’t feed.

He can hear John puttering about in the kitchen and living room, heartbeat placid and calm. Sherlock closes his eyes, swaying slightly on the spot as he listens, intent on that steady rhythm, trying to pick up on any subtle nuances to it. 

There are none, because John is healthy. John is fine. Sherlock opens his eyes again, satisfied.

He leaves the bathroom in a cloud of steam, covered from neck to toe in the towel. He finds John in the kitchen, putting Sherlock’s ruined shirt and trousers and – so _that’s_ why John is blushing – underwear into a black plastic bag.

John turns at the sound of Sherlock’s approach and laughs fondly at the sight of him: the littlest vampire all wrapped up in a fluffy towel, damp hair plastered to his head and just starting to curl at the ends.

“You can borrow some of my clothes,” John says, drawing nearer to Sherlock to lay a hand on his arm and turn him in the direction of the right bedroom. 

Sherlock doesn’t say “thank you”. He’s going to look ridiculous in one of John’s jumpers.

 

* * *

 

It’s just a moment of innocent adolescent curiosity, just a quick glimpse.

A quick, stolen glimpse through the door that Sherlock had left slightly ajar when he went to dress in some of John’s clothes.

When John looks through the crack in the door, Sherlock is wrapped in the towel still, contemplating the jumper on the bed. He’s selected and laid out one of John’s knitted jumpers, the beige one that John had been wearing the night after they first met. The first thing Sherlock had seen him in besides his school uniform.

With his back to John, Sherlock sheds the towel with a fluid movement of his shoulders, and John sees a body not entirely unlike his own, really. Head, back, arms, waist, legs, feet. (John skips over the middle bit quickly in embarrassment.)

Of course, Sherlock is different from him in superficial ways: fair skin dotted with sparse freckles and moles where John’s is lightly tanned and mostly unmarked, slender and bony where John is shorter and sturdy. He’s not powerfully built like Moran, Sherlock’s strength lies in his grace – he’s built to be agile like a runner, not brutal like a fighter.

Sherlock turns around and John ducks back from the door, face burning with shame. He’s seen too much.

 

* * *

 

“There’s a research facility,” Sherlock waves a hand, “all very top secret, Mycroft is heavily involved, naturally. They’re looking into a cure.”

John, curled up on the sofa next to him, gapes.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Oh, I should probably mention: I’m not the world’s only vampire.”

“Never said you were.” John pauses, thinking about his next question. “Are they close to finding one? A cure, I mean.”

“Not right now.”

They lapse into silence, content and companionable rather than awkward. John smiles at nothing in particular. 

Sherlock is clean and comfortable in his borrowed clothing, though the jumper is too short in the arms and the jeans equally too short for his legs.

The blood in the hallway has been mopped up and no evidence remains. John has never been more thankful that they never got around to carpeting that bit of the flat. 

“You’ll make a good doctor, John,” Sherlock says all of a sudden.

 John doesn’t know what to say. Direct compliments from Sherlock are not something he is entirely used to. “I… um, thank you.”

He thinks of his future, his plans. All of them until now had involved becoming a doctor or joining the army. Often both.

Nowhere in this picture did a permanently 13 year old vampire fit in. The thought makes John feel anxious, and he reaches out to clutch at Sherlock’s hand.

“You’ll always be my friend,” he says, trying not to make it too obviously a question.

Sherlock smiles, but it doesn’t look entirely happy. “I said I would be.”

John wants to say more, but there’s the sound of a key turning in the lock and _shit,_ he’s lost track of time.

“My mum!” he whispers, but Sherlock is already up and heading for John’s bedroom.

John chases after him, just getting out of the living room in time before the front door opens.

In his bedroom, Sherlock is nowhere to be found. From the cold air that’s coming in, there’s only one way he can have gone.

John goes to the window and plants his palms on his desk as he leans forward to look out. Sherlock is crouching on the windowsill outside his own bedroom, grinning widely. John can’t help the small giggle that bursts out of his mouth and he claps a hand over it. It sets Sherlock off, quietly snickering as he opens his window and climbs back into 221B. His head pops out again instantly after, still laughing.

Their mirth dies down and they end up just looking at each other for a short time. 

Sherlock’s lingering smirk turns into a genuine smile. “Goodnight, John,” he calls across from his window.

“Night, Sherlock.”

 

* * *

 

Sherlock plays an imaginary symphony that night to the tempo of John’s heart while John sleeps on next door, unaware.

He continues to listen to the steady rhythm he’d been using as his metronome for a long time afterwards, and then calls Mycroft.

“I need you to come get me,” is what he opens with.

“It’s nearly four in the morning, Sherlock,” is the weary reply. Sherlock would ordinarily feel a spark of vindictive pleasure at waking his brother, but it’s just not there tonight. “And I’m busy for the remainder of the week. I’m not at your beck and call.”

Sherlock grits his teeth. “Fine, Monday evening then. I want to go back into the research programme.”

“You mean you’re willing to ‘be their guinea pig’ now? Whatever could have changed your mind?”

Sherlock closes his eyes. That smug bastard, he _knows_ about John somehow, of course he does.

A heavy sigh from Mycroft. “I’ll be there after dark on _Tuesday_ ,” he says, and hangs up.

 _Good_ , Sherlock thinks, that’s… good. And yet, it feels like the one outcome he didn’t want. 

Moving on was always on the agenda. It has to be, for him. 

He’s getting nowhere with the Carl Powers case because he looks like a child trying to do an adult’s job, so there’s no point staying for that. The only thing worth staying for now is John, but John has plans. John has a future that doesn’t include Sherlock. Not as he is currently. Not like this.

 

* * *

 

_John -_

_I must be gone and live,_

_or stay and die,_

_but do believe that I am_

_(and shall remain)_

_very sincerely yours._

_\- Sherlock Holmes_

It’s the same note, the very same one. John takes the pin out of the door to 221B, takes the scrap of paper off the pin with shaking fingers, pricking himself as he does. Sure enough, the music is there on the back. Sherlock must have taken the note off his desk the night before when he climbed out the window.

John knocks on the door for a fifth time, then pounds his fist against the wood over and over, only stopping when a neighbour shouts at him from inside her flat.

Putting his back to the door, John lets himself slide down against it until he hits the ground. The note flutters out of his numb fingers.

Sherlock is gone.

 

* * *

 

On the other side of the door, only necessity keeps Sherlock silent, when all he wants to do is break everything that is still whole in the flat.

It’s better to cut John off entirely while he waits for Mycroft. If he sees him again, he might change his mind.

 

* * *

 

John is beyond glad to get back to school on Monday. The last few days of his suspension had been unbearable: alone with himself and his thoughts about what it was that he said, what he _did_ , that made Sherlock leave.

He’s read that note so many times that the ink is starting to fade from where his fingers have touched it, trying to find some hidden meaning.

_I must be gone and live or stay and die._

Would it really have killed Sherlock to stay with him?

He misses half of his lessons in a distracted daze, he forgets to leave the classroom during breaktime. The only thing that brings him back to life is when he has to go out onto the field at lunchtime and sees Moriarty with a bandage over his ear.

John scurries past him, not making eye contact. He can still feel Moran’s vengeful eyes on his back as he goes.

The confidence he felt that previous Monday is gone, and John feels more despondent, more fearful than ever. They’re going to hurt him and he knows it. It’s going to be bad this time, something to make sure he never forgets his place.

A Rubik’s cube in one pocket and the Swiss Army knife in the other.

He’s back to square one.

It’s worse than that even, because he can remember a time when he felt something besides hopeless. He remembers feeling happy.

 

* * *

 

“All right, lads, listen up!” Mr Wiltshire yells over the raucous chatter in the boys’ changing room. “The leisure centre is open again now the police are done with their investigations, so that means monthly swimming is back on, starting tomorrow, first thing!”

A chorus of groaning and mumbled dissent from the assembled boys.

“I know, but if you fall in a river and drown,” Wiltshire continues, “at least it won’t be my fault.”

“Looking forward to it, sir,” pipes up Moriarty, sat on one of the benches while his mates stand around him. He looks like a king on a throne, minions and guards all set to do his bidding.

“That’s a good lad, Jim,” Wiltshire says, casting a glare at the opposite side of the room where John sits, trying to make himself look as small as possible. “Good to see you back on your feet.”

John looks up and sees Moriarty smirk. “Yes, sir, thank you. It’s good to _be_ back with all my friends.”

The smirk gets turned in John’s direction. John almost bares his teeth in return, before he remembers the fact that he can’t say “all my friends” the way Moriarty can. He’s got nothing, and that makes him vulnerable. He doesn’t need to call attention to himself right now, he needs to keep his head down and _survive_.

“Watson, stop dawdling over there and get out to the field,” Wiltshire barks. “I don’t want to see you in here when I get back to lock up.”

John does what he has to – he gets his head down and gets on. “Yes, sir.”

 

* * *

 

Sherlock hates Mycroft’s car. He hates how polished it is, he hates the fact that it smells like money, and he hates that Mycroft has a chauffeur, giving him free reign to sit in the back with his younger brother and gloat.

Mycroft sits primly, back straight and legs crossed. By contrast, Sherlock lounges against the leather seats, periodically pushing himself back up when he slides down too far.

“I did warn you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock ignores him. In the thirty years they’ve been brothers, Sherlock has been thirteen years old for over half of them. He’s justified in his petulant ways.

Sighing at Sherlock’s lack of response, Mycroft dips a hand into his suit jacket to pull out something that glints, something that probably contains jewels, because it casts little rainbows on the car door where Sherlock has been resolutely staring. Sherlock is interested despite himself and looks towards Mycroft’s hand, curiosity overcoming his desire not to appear so.

“What have I told you about sentiment? Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.”

Mycroft turns the object over in his hands, holds it up to the light and examines it as though it contains the mysteries of the universe. It’s Mrs Hudson’s brooch, Sherlock realises. Typical Mycroft, always one step ahead.

“Give it to me,” Sherlock demands.

“I wonder, what will you take from the next person after I find you a new… situation?”

 _Nothing_ , Sherlock thinks firmly. He will take nothing because he will require nothing. He will form no attachment to any living soul he meets from this day on. Nor to any dead soul for that matter, although he’s always been detached when it comes to the victims of the puzzles he solves…

Puzzles. The Rubik’s cube. He’d meant to take it back before leaving Baker Street Court but hadn’t found it on John’s desk the night before, suspecting then that John must actually carry it on his person.

He thinks about telling Mycroft they have to turn around and go back, thinks about stealing into John’s room and taking something, _anything_ , any item so that he can delete (never delete, only store) what he doesn’t need, but keep a focus for the memories in case he should want them back, a tactile object to bury them in.

He has nothing of John’s. How could he forget to take something?

_Sentiment._

Did he forget at all? Or did he purposely ‘forget’ so this would happen? So he would have a reason to go back?

He can’t. Not now. He can’t tell Mycroft they have to return, because then Mycroft will _know_ and Sherlock couldn’t stand that.

“Are you going to answer me?” Mycroft’s voice cuts into his thoughts.

Sherlock scowls and looks down at his shoes, still ignoring his brother as he natters on uselessly. He could always use those as the focus, Sherlock supposes, seeing as he still has John’s trainers adorning his feet. He would just loathe using _shoes_ for that particular purpose. Sentiment, again.

He considers the trainers, the mud on the soles so telling of where John has been (and now Sherlock too). There are probably still dead skin cells on the laces…

Shoes. Eczema.

Sherlock sits suddenly upright. “Mycroft, stop talking this instant. We have to go back.”

“Are you going to give me a valid reason, dear brother? One that doesn’t involve this-” Mycroft sniffs haughtily, “this _John_ character?”

“I am,” Sherlock says.

 

* * *

 

John hasn’t missed the chlorine. He hasn’t missed the way the pool water stings his eyes and his nose. He hasn’t missed the way he has to discard most of his clothes before emerging, exposed and vulnerable, to swim with classmates who hate him.

He puts his (neatly folded) clothes into a locker with a sigh, placing the Rubik’s cube on top of the pile. Then he thinks better of it and takes it with him instead, something tangible to hold on to if things get unbearable. Just one hour at the pool. He can do an hour, hiding out at the shallow end while Mr Wiltshire focuses on improving the stronger swimmers like he always does. So much for not wanting anyone to fall in a river and drown.

After half an hour, he dares to think he might make it. He hasn’t seen Moriarty at all, and Moran is over with their teacher.

He thinks he’s going to make it.

Some time later, Mr Wiltshire shouts that it’s the end of the lesson and everyone begins to make a move for the showers. A loud scream pierces the air all of a sudden, echoing off the tiled walls of the pool, and Mr Wiltshire starts running in the direction of the changing rooms.

John moves to get out too, placing the Rubik’s cube on the edge of the pool so he can plant both hands on either side of it and pull himself out.

A foot across his left hand stops him. John cries out in pain as the shoe grinds down over his knuckles. It’s an expensive, Italian leather shoe. One of a pair that no one in their school can afford except for one person.

“That’ll be Sebastian, providing a distraction for our beloved Coach.”

John looks up at Moriarty’s face, watches him bend down to pick up the Rubik’s cube. The grin he’s sporting makes John feel sick.

 “What’s this, then?” Moriarty asks in that lilting voice of his, the one that’s soft on the surface, concealing a deeper layer of menace – a layer you’d only find if you already knew it existed.

“It’s mine, give it back.”

John makes a grab for the cube, splashing water over Moriarty who straightens up and moves back a pace, huffing in irritation. As Moriarty stands – fully clothed, dry, looming over him – John feels incredibly small and insignificant in the pool.

“Ah, ah,” Moriarty says, wagging a mocking finger at him with one hand, testing the weight of the cube in the other. “It’s rude to snatch.”

John glares at him in silence.

“So, it’s important to you,” Moriarty continues. “A token from the boyfriend? He can’t be imaginary if he gives you gifts now, can he?”

“Give it _back_.”

Moriarty purses his mouth in an exaggerated pout. “Hmm, no. I think I’d like to hang on to it for now. You’ve been carrying it around like some good luck charm; I want to see if it brings me any luck. You’ll get it back, say… tonight? If you meet me here at eight thirty, we’ll play a little game so you can win it back.”

“I’m not stupid,” John says. “I know your _game_ , what makes you think I’ll play?”

“Eight thirty, John, or your trinket here?” Moriarty moves the cube as if to toss it over his shoulder. “It’ll be gone for good. And I know it’s something you want to get back. Desperately.”

He walks away then, leaving John to drag himself out of the pool with trembling limbs.

 

* * *

 

Sneaking out, as usual, had been no bother.

As John walks briskly through the streets (the snow mostly melted, grey sludge everywhere) towards the pool, he’s not feeling afraid.

He knows that Moriarty wants to play a ‘game’, and he knows the aim of the game will be to hurt him as revenge for Moriarty’s ear. But what does it matter if someone hurts him? There’s no one to care, now.

He’s got his knife in his pocket, anyway. He’s pretty sure he’s going to use it tonight, if only to make this all _stop_.

But he’s not here to hurt anyone, not really. He just needs that Rubik’s cube back, he can’t lose it. He can’t lose that memory. It’s already starting to feel like he might have dreamt Sherlock – a vampire boy who wanted to be John’s friend. Everything about him is impossible. But John _can’t_ have made him up, surely.

He walks into the swimming pool with his head up, chin tilted in defiance, and goes to play the game.


	5. Chapter 5

“For the love of God, Mycroft, can’t your driver go any faster than fifty-three miles per hour?”

Mycroft arches an eyebrow, plucks a mote of imaginary dust from his immaculate suit. “This is a thirty mile an hour zone, Sherlock.”

Sherlock crosses his arms and throws himself back against his seat.

“What’s the rush?” Mycroft continues. “You and the not completely inconsiderable officers of the Metropolitan police force have already searched the swimming pool to no avail, do you really expect these shoes to just be sitting there if you go in again?”

“It’s the best starting place. There must be something I’ve overlooked…”

“When you were distracted,” Mycroft finishes for him, “by-”

“Yes, I know, thank you. Just get your man to speed things along a bit. I know you’ve never had to pay a speeding fine in your life, not in your _position_.”

Mycroft gives a tight smile. “You _are_ distracted,” he says. “My man, indeed.”

He then uses the end of his umbrella to tap lightly on the screen that separates them from the driver. “Anthea, my brother would like you violate more traffic laws. Kindly do, as I believe the expression goes, put your foot down.”

A violent surge of the car as the minion obeys.

Mycroft smirks. Sherlock scowls and hauls himself back up the seat again.

“What sort of a name is _Anthea_?” he asks bitterly.

“One that’s less common than _John_ ,” Mycroft returns, as pleasant as you like.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Drowning, John thinks, is up there with burning as one of the worst ways to die. When Moriarty had ordered him to get into the pool (still in his clothes) so that he and Moran could explain the rules of the game to him, this was the only thought in John’s head.

Moriarty crouches at the pool’s edge above John as he speaks to him. “Look what I found in your locker earlier today,” he says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out John’s knife, holding it in his right hand while the Rubik’s cube occupies his left. “Really, you carry the most _interesting_ things.”

John feels his blood freeze in his veins. He pats down his trouser pocket underwater, creating a small splashing noise. The knife is there, he can feel it.

Moriarty tuts lightly. “A decoy, John. You should have checked it before coming in, the blade has been removed. Couldn’t let you hang onto something as dangerous as this, so I swapped it earlier.”

Moran comes to Moriarty’s side, deftly catching the cube that’s tossed to him. Moriarty leans over the side of the pool, closer to John.

“Here’s what’s going to happen, Johnny,” he says, reaching a hand out to cup John’s jaw. John rears back and away from his touch.

Moriarty leans further forward and grabs his chin a second time, fingernails just long enough to dig in painfully.

“Don’t be difficult now,” he says, face inches from John’s and close enough that John can feel every breath.

John still tries to squirm away from his grip.

“Do you know the expression ‘an eye for an eye’?” Moriarty asks, ignoring John’s struggle.

Tears gather in John’s eyes from the sting of the fingernails biting into his skin. He doesn’t answer.

Moriarty glances towards Moran just once in wordless communication, releasing John’s chin as Moran moves swiftly to lay a hand on the top of John’s head, pressing down hard.

As John goes under, he panics and draws in a gulp of water. The water goes in his mouth and up his nose and in his eyes and he can’t breathe, he can’t hold his breath for long and oh God, this is how he’s going to die, they’re going to drown him and–

Moran pulls John’s head back out of the water by his hair, and John’s first breath after resurfacing is a choked sob of agony.

“He asked you a question,” Moran says.

Moriarty lays a hand on Moran’s shoulder and shakes his head. “Yes, thank you, Sebastian, I’ll take over the theatrics again now.” He rolls his eyes at John (still spluttering and coughing) and grins as if sharing a joke. “I don’t want this to get _too_ cliché.”

Unfolding the knife and taking the top of the handle carefully between two fingers, Moriarty offers it to Moran. Moran accepts the knife with a laugh, eyes greedily roaming over the blade as it glints under the fluorescent lights.

Moriarty steps back and Moran steps forward, dropping down to kneel by the pool. He sets the Rubik’s cube down beside him to grasp the back of John’s neck with one hand and bring the knife-point perilously close to John’s left eye with the other.

“Now, usually it’s an eye for an eye,” Moriarty says, as conversational as someone talking about the weather, or what they had for dinner last night, “but I think an eye for an ear will do nicely. And here’s where the game comes in: I’m going to see how long you can hold your breath for. If you can go five minutes, we’ll let you go. If not, Seb here is going to take your eye out.”

Shivering violently, John’s teeth clack together when he opens his mouth to ask: “Are you going to kill me?”

“Kill you?” Moriarty looks almost offended. “No, don’t be obvious. No, no, I’m not going to kill you.”

A pause where Moriarty seems to consider something. “Not yet, anyway.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“The doors are all locked but there’s a light on. Why?” Sherlock paces back and forth, tries the door handle again though he knows it’s futile. “Whoever was last here should be gone.”

“Perhaps the cleaner left the light on, you know how negligent ordinary people can be...”

Sherlock glares at his older brother’s obtuseness. “Something’s going on here, Mycroft, I can hear heartbeats inside.”

One of which is working overtime, beating a frantic rhythm like a startled rabbit’s heart might.

“I’ve taught you to focus, Sherlock,” Mycroft drawls, “you can hear more than heartbeats and pulses if you set your mind to it and overcome that… troublesome urge of yours.”

“I haven’t fed in days!” Sherlock protests, furiously shaking both hands in front of his face.

“Try harder.”

The words throw Sherlock back to a time when he had only just become… what he is now. When Mycroft was his only support, his only teacher. His only friend.

Sherlock doesn’t need to listen for voices, because when he does try to listen more intently, he realises just who that frantic heartbeat belongs to.

“John,” he says. “John is in there.”

And John is scared, Sherlock neglects to add, because if he says it aloud his own heart will go into overdrive.

The fear must echo in his voice anyway, because Mycroft is already reaching into his jacket for his phone. “I’m calling in a team,” he says, “just as a precaution.”

“Make sure you call Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Sherlock says.

A familiar face will be good for John when Sherlock gets him out of there.

He turns away from Mycroft, ready to take off at a sprint and get in there by any means possible – locked doors or no – when Mycroft grabs onto his arm.

“Sherlock, a boy was killed in there not long ago. Wait, and let me call the team. Be sensible and stop trying to run into danger like a _child_.”

Mycroft may be bigger, older and heavier, but Sherlock can use his extra strength to his advantage when he has to. He shrugs off Mycroft’s hand and runs over to the building, immediately finding the first foothold that will let him dart up the wall to the skylight over the pool.

“Sherlock!” Mycroft calls after him, and there’s honest-to-god concern in his tone. It’s something Sherlock hasn’t heard in a while.

He doesn’t stop climbing.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The noise of glass smashing is distorted underwater.

John only hears the tail end of it properly when Moran releases his head and he rushes up towards the surface for air. He sucks in grateful breaths, spitting out water and scrubbing at his closed, stinging eyes with both hands.

When he opens his eyes again, he sees Sherlock standing opposite Moran and Moriarty, surrounded by shards of glass and dusting more off of his suit.

Relief floods through John so palpably, he almost feels like he has to spit that out too. Sherlock is here. Sherlock will help him.

Moriarty and Moran seem to be frozen in shock from witnessing a boy dropping through the skylight.

Naturally, Moriarty recovers first. “And who are _you_?” he asks, his usual disdain laced through the question.

Sherlock doesn’t answer. He’s advancing towards Moriarty, but his eyes are on John.

“Are you all right?” he asks. Then, more urgently: “John, are you all right?”

“You can talk, Johnny boy,” Moriarty says, gaze fixed on Sherlock the same way Sherlock’s is on John.

He _can_ talk, he supposes, but the ability seems to be lost on him at present, and he gives a tight nod.

“Get out of the pool and stand behind me,” Sherlock orders.

John knows he’s not really in control here. Sherlock’s eyes have travelled to Moriarty and the two seem to have locked gazes in some bizarre showdown.

Sherlock doesn’t spare him a glance as John complies with the order, pulling himself out of the pool against the oxygen-deprived burn in his arms and legs, and moves to stand at Sherlock’s back. He picks up the Rubik’s cube and pockets it as he goes.

“It was you,” Sherlock says to Moriarty. “You killed Carl Powers, didn’t you? And you were going to do the same to John. I know you used his eczema medicine to make it look like he drowned. That’s why you kept his shoes. What was it, a muscle relaxant?”

Moriarty smiles, and John fully realises then that he’s not just a playground bully taking things too far, he really _is_ that deranged – a boy has dropped out of the sky and is calling him a murderer, and Moriarty isn’t denying it, he’s grinning like it’s Christmas morning.

“Botulinum toxin. So you know what I did. What does that make you, I wonder…?”

In a flash, Sherlock has crossed the distance between them, shoved Moran to the floor with one hand, and is gripping Moriarty by the throat with the other. Moriarty’s eyes bulge, but he’s _still_ smiling, a grotesque, twisted curve of his lips.

“I’m nothing like you,” Sherlock says. “That’s all that matters.”

“Sherlock,” John calls out to him urgently, afraid of what Sherlock can do, how easy it would be for him to kill Moriarty here and now. “Stop!”

At once, Sherlock releases Moriarty, leaving a pattern of red fingerprints around his neck.

Moriarty coughs and rubs at the abused flesh. “Are you sure?” he asks.

“Quite certain,” Sherlock replies coldly.

Moriarty only smiles wider, almost all of his teeth on show. “You _are_ like me. We think the same way, you and I.” He gestures at Moran, dazed on the floor from the force of the push Sherlock gave him, and then at John. “These two, they’re fun to keep around, useful in a tight spot, but they’re not like us. They’re not clever like us, they don’t get _bored_.”

“I can have you arrested,” Sherlock says, ignoring Moriarty’s poisonous words. “For what you did to Carl Powers.”

“No, you won’t. And besides, what evidence do you have? The word of one thirteen year old boy – two, if Johnny here has the balls to back you up – against another thirteen year old boy.”

“I can find the shoes. I can prove-”

“Conjecture, dear me, that won’t do at all.”

“I could kill you with my bare hands,” Sherlock says, the words thrumming with barely disguised bloodlust. John swallows thickly. Sherlock is a vampire, he’s _meant_ to be a killer. “Then you can’t kill again, and I believe they call that a result.”

“No, you _won’t_ ,” Moriarty stamps his foot. “Even if only because that snivelling mess behind you,” he points at John, “will be afraid of you. And you couldn’t stand that.”

Sherlock turns his head to meet John’s eyes. John knows he’d just about forgotten he was even there.

Silently, John reaches out and takes Sherlock’s hand in his own, his fingers finding their way invariably to the spaces between Sherlock’s. He shakes his head. Sherlock gives him a beseeching look: _I could do it, I could end this._

John shakes his head again, slower this time.

Moriarty watches them and his lip curls. “No, you’re nothing like me.”

On the floor, Moran groans loudly, interrupting the standoff before Sherlock can reply.

“Help is on the way, I need more _time_ ,” Sherlock whispers urgently to John while Moriarty is distracted. John looks back at him wide-eyed, helpless. What can they do?

“Well,” Moriarty says, clapping his hands together, “I’d better be off now, I think. I’m getting bored, but it’s been fun, boys. Before I go,” Moriarty addresses Sherlock directly, “you should know that I’m Jim Moriarty, and you should remember that name. Will you tell me yours?”

Sherlock just shakes his head – more from apparent disbelief than as a reply.

Time, John thinks desperately. Moriarty is intrigued by Sherlock, he can see that. Why else would he care what Sherlock’s name was?

“How about I tell you something about him instead?” John pipes up.

Sherlock and Moriarty’s heads both angle towards John at once, Sherlock confused and Moriarty delighted.

“Oh, this will be good – I love a good story!” Moriarty grins.

Moran is sitting up now, clutching at his head. Moriarty turns the smile down on him, “Time to go soon,” he says. “Story first though.”

John licks his lips, keeping his eyes on Sherlock. He just has to stall for time. Help is on the way, he just needs to give them _time_.

Before he can think of how to begin though, sirens sound in the distance. The noise gets louder as they all listen, unmistakably travelling towards them. Moriarty’s face twists into an expression of fury. “Oh, _very_ good,” he sneers. “I suppose you’ve got someone on the outside?”

Sherlock’s only answer is to smirk.

Moran is back on his feet, standing behind Moriarty now and pulling at his sleeve. “We really have to go,” he says.

Moriarty paces back and forth like a caged animal and abruptly screams out his frustration. Sherlock recoils from the display of insanity, backing up just slightly into John’s space. John steadies him, squeezing the hand he’s still clutching for reassurance.

The pacing continues for a moment, and then Moriarty begins striding towards the east exit without another word to them, Moran trailing behind him.

“I’ll be seeing you around, I’m sure,” Moriarty says over his shoulder with a rueful laugh when he gets to the door, pulling a key from his pocket.

Sherlock starts to pull his hand out of from John’s grip, meaning to follow Moriarty. John doesn’t let go of him.

“John,” Sherlock pleads, but he’s still got that vicious glint in his eyes.

John isn’t going to let him do this, if only because he can’t let Sherlock reveal himself. A Moriarty who knows about vampires would be even more dangerous than the one they already have on their hands.

“Let the police do their job,” he says.

The door opens and shuts with a creak. Moriarty and Moran are gone.

Sherlock’s eyes are wide and bright, darting back and forth over John’s face for injuries, searching frantically for fear and loathing in John’s expression. He looks like a dog waiting to be struck. Heart clenching painfully, John brings their joined hands up between their chests and looks at them until Sherlock does the same.

“See this? You’re not like him,” John says, “you’re just not. It’s okay now, we’re okay.”

The sirens draw ever closer, the bangs of car doors and raised voices just beginning outside when John leans across the distance that separates them, and presses his mouth gently against Sherlock’s.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


When they emerge from the pool (hands clasped tightly together, John swamped and shivering in Sherlock’s coat), Detective Inspector Lestrade is the first one to swoop down on them.

“John!” the relief is audible in his tone as he throws his arms around John’s shoulders, “Thank God.”

“I’m okay, Uncle Greg.”

Sherlock let his hand go the moment Lestrade approached, so John has it free to bring up and pat his uncle on the back in a weak offer of comfort.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock acknowledges when his brother comes over and lays a palm on Sherlock’s shoulder, the only gesture of reassurance or concern Mycroft can give, and the only one Sherlock will accept.

“I trusted that you would know what you were doing,” Mycroft says. “I elected to call the police rather than snipers, under the circumstances. The circumstances being that I had no idea what was going on in there. You know how I hate that.”

“Have they caught them?”

There’s a brief twitch of Mycroft’s left eyebrow. Coming from him, that’s as good as a frown. “Caught whom?”

Sherlock closes his eyes in resignation. So he’s escaped. The regret is a solid lead weight in Sherlock’s stomach. He should have killed Moriarty while he had the chance, before he could fully grow into the monster he’s sure to become. It takes one to know one.

“He’s escaped then,” Sherlock says wearily. “Moriarty, he’s a boy from John’s school. He’s responsible for the death of Carl Powers, the-”

“The case you’ve been pursuing,” Mycroft interrupts. “I’m aware.”

Sherlock isn’t surprised in the slightest. “There’s another boy involved, Sebastian Moran. He seems to do the dirty work, as it were. He was going to kill John.”

Mycroft nods and says nothing. The pair of them watch John with Lestrade, off to one side and talking quietly, an orange shock blanket draped loosely around John in place of Sherlock’s coat. He’s got it folded over his arm now instead, his other hand resting on top of it as if there were some strength to draw from the fabric.

“They’ll disappear,” Sherlock continues after a moment. “The police won’t find them, John told me just now that they’re both orphans from a care home. There’s nothing to stop them from leaving and Moriarty will have planned for this. He’s clever, Mycroft.”

“And John is telling the Detective Inspector everything as we speak?”

“Yes, but I expect whatever effort they put into searching for them will be fruitless.”

They watch as Lestrade hugs John tightly again. The warmth of Mycroft’s hand on Sherlock’s shoulder has long since dissipated.

“Do you ever wonder if there’s something wrong with us?” Sherlock asks. He doesn’t give Mycroft time to answer as he blurts out his real fear: “Moriarty said I was like him. John said I’m not, but I am, aren’t I? I’ve killed people before.”

Mycroft considers his answer, the way Sherlock knew he would, rather than immediately contradicting Sherlock’s worry. He’s grateful for that.

“Something happened to you, Sherlock,” Mycroft says eventually. “Something outside of your control, when you were just a child. Perhaps the same happened to Moriarty.”

Sherlock frowns. “He wasn’t like me in that way.”

Mycroft dips his head in acknowledgement. “I don’t mean literally the same. You said he was an orphan,” he says, allowing the implication to sink in.

Oh.

A long pause follows the realisation. This isn’t the sort of conversation either of them knows how to navigate well.

John is looking over at them, uncertainty in his eyes as he fiddles with Sherlock’s coat. He wants to approach now he’s finished talking with Lestrade, but he doesn’t know Mycroft.

“You ought to say goodbye to him,” Mycroft says mildly, “if you’re still set on going back into the programme.”

Sherlock is. More than ever, considering what they’ve just spoken about. Sherlock may not have drank from a living person in years, but the urge is still there. He may not care for people in general, but he doesn’t want to kill anyone. He doesn’t want to be like Moriarty and he doesn’t want to hurt John.

Without another word to his brother, Sherlock crosses over to John. He sees Mycroft stroll over to speak with Lestrade and rolls his eyes. Sorting everything out with affected charm, friends in high places, and thinly veiled threats. As usual.

He turns his attention back to John. John is smiling at him, his face glowing blue intermittently in the light of the police car he’s stood by. Sherlock knows he won’t be smiling for long.

“I told him everything,” John says when Sherlock reaches him. The lack of the weight that had been on his shoulders is profound as John stands taller, his voices rings clearer, his smile reaches his eyes.

Sherlock smiles back at him. “Good.”

They both shift their feet awkwardly for a moment – John because he’s unsure how to proceed after the kiss in the swimming pool, and Sherlock because goodbye speeches (or any speeches that don’t involve rattling off a factual thought process) are something he actively avoids.

“I still have to leave,” Sherlock says, when he can put it off no longer.

John’s smile drops, and Sherlock misses it instantly. “Why?”

“That cure I told you about, I need to pursue it. I can’t do that here.”

“Where do you have to go?” John asks. “I’ll come with you.”

Loyal John. Sherlock should have known he’d say that.

“And leave school? Leave your mother and sister?” Sherlock shakes his head. “Don’t be stupid, you can’t.”

John’s eyebrows draw together, his fists clench. “But I want to!”

“I have to go alone, John.” It’s hard to look at John’s face right now, so Sherlock looks off to one side.

“When will you come back?” John asks, a pleading note to the words.

How can Sherlock say ‘never’ to him? How can he tell John that this isn’t just for himself, but for John too? John is selfless, he’d know. Sherlock’s never done a single selfless thing before in his life, he doesn’t know how to do this one.

“One day, maybe,” is what he ends up saying.

Any kind of cure is a long way off, Sherlock knows. Even his own years of experimentation into the area have been futile. If submitting himself to the scientists’ research ever does work, John will have moved on. He’ll be at university, or in a job. He might even be married with children.

Sherlock will be stuck at thirteen until someone finds this cure, unable to move on. By the time he’s no longer frozen like this, there will be no place for him in John’s life.

He hears footsteps behind him, the _click_ of Mycroft’s shoes. “We have to go soon, Sherlock,” he says.

They don’t. It hardly matters whether they leave now or in half an hour or however long it takes for him to say goodbye to John properly. It’s Mycroft’s attempt to get him out of this situation, as if Sherlock can’t do it for himself. He’s probably listened to every word, the bastard.

Sherlock huffs in irritation, and Mycroft steps back again, ostensibly to give them privacy. Such a thing does not exist when your brother is Mycroft Holmes.

“Is this- is this goodbye then?” John’s voice cracks slightly on the last word. There are tears gathering along his lower eyelids, unshed through force of will.

Sherlock _will_ miss him, he can’t deny that.

“For now,” he says, unable to completely destroy John’s hope that they’ll meet again (unable to destroy his own).

John holds out his coat to him, and Sherlock takes it. The tears finally spill at that. Sherlock reaches out to wipe them away quickly, almost clumsily. He doesn’t like looking at them, for some reason.

“It’s not forever,” he says. He doesn’t truly believe his own words.

“When you’re cured, you could come and find me.”

“What if you don’t want me to find you?”

“Then I’ll be the one searching for you,” John says, fierce certainty underlying the words. “How many other people have a name as ridiculous as yours?”

John smiles, every inch the brave little soldier. He’s tenacious, he’s vibrant and energetic and _human_ with so much potential compared to Sherlock’s jaded, colourless half-life. When he’s fixed, Sherlock dares to think, maybe they’ll be more equal. Maybe he’ll be more worthy.

“I’ll find you, John,” he says. “If you want me to find you, then I won’t stop looking until I do.”

If he can be cured, if he can be allowed to age again, he has a plan. As soon as his face and voice change enough for people to respect him and his knowledge, he’s going to carve out a position for himself as a real consulting detective, not just some kid playing at it. A person like that could surely use his skills and resources to find one man.

“You better not,” John says.

Sherlock laughs softly. “Goodbye, John,” he says, leaning forward to brush a kiss over John’s cheek. It’s still damp from his tears.

John attempts to maintain his smile when Sherlock pulls back, but it’s turned rather wobbly. “Goodbye, Sherlock.” He reaches into his pocket, drawing out the Rubik’s cube. “Do you want this back?” he asks.

Sherlock looks at the cube and shakes his head. He doesn’t need it to remember John by – he won’t even _try_ to delete John, there’s no point.

“I said you could keep it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock sees Lestrade approaching, a frown etched into his features. He can feel Mycroft’s expressive presence like a vibration behind him.

“Sherlock,” comes the oddly gentle voice of his older brother a moment later, “it really is time we left.”

He’s probably right on this occasion, Sherlock thinks bitterly.

“John?” Lestrade is with them now, putting a comforting hand down to John’s shoulder.

Sherlock feels Mycroft’s palm fitting once more over the curve of his own shoulder. Mycroft and Lestrade are each trying to steer them away now to go off in their separate directions. Their time is up.

When Mycroft’s hand begins to exert a subtle pressure, he lets himself be led away to the car.

He only looks back once, for one last mental picture.

John is still smiling.


	6. Epilogue

_Nothing happens to me._

John looks at the blinking cursor on the screen of his laptop and sighs. This was a terrible idea and his counsellor, Ella, should be sacked. Keeping a blog about everything that happens to him is not going to help him readjust to civilian life.

Looking at his last rather depressing statement again, John holds down the backspace key and then deletes the entry he had been about to make. Best not to let Ella think he might do something stupid. He puts the laptop away in the desk drawer where it will sit unused, innocuous next to his (highly illegal, sometimes highly tempting) Browning L9A1, and closes the drawer with a shove.

Perhaps the shove was slightly too forceful, perhaps it was not, but that’s when he hears it:

Two scrapes against his door.

A knock followed by another scrape.

A scrape, a knock, two more scrapes.

It’s Morse code.

 

**\- -     . -     - . - -**

**. .**

**\- . - .     - - -     - -     .**

**. .     - .**

 

John’s heart beats frantically as he listens to the message and he leaps to his feet at the end of it, his cane forgotten as he races across the room to pull open the door.

 “Yes,” he says to the man he finds on the threshold. He reaches out to grasp the lapels of the man’s coat, dragging him inside with a breathless laugh, keeping hold of him as though he might disappear while John tries to take him all in at once. _Tall, still too thin, just as sharp in the face, a little younger than me now._

He has the same eyes.

“Yes,” John says again, “but this time, you have to stay.”

  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Any and all comments are greatly appreciated.


End file.
